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CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 



AND 



EXPERIENCE. 



EEV. WILLIAM L GILL, A. M., 

Author of Evolution and Progress," *• Analytical Processes; 
or, The Primary Principle of Philosophy." 




V o,. 









New York : 
THE AUTHORS' PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

1877. • 



fA 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by 

THE AUTHOES' PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C, 



I, 






TO 
BEAD BENEDICT, Esq., 

IN RECOGNITION OF A GENEROUS FKEENDSHIP, 

AND AS 

A MARK OF SINCERE AND HIGH ESTEEM, 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 

BY 

THE AUTHOB. 



PEEFACE. 

It was one of the resolutions of President Edwards always to 
act according to tlie intuitions of his most exalted spiritual 
states, an eminently good, and noble resolution. It may partly 
have been both cause and effect of his lofty character. This re- 
solution is the expression of an obvious duty and a pregnant 
principle, a principle which gives character to the following dis- 
cussion. Men may also form a lofty conception of which they do 
not know the truth or reality ; but if they do not know the con- 
trary, it has paramount claims on their service and devotion, 
which are necessary and conducive to spiritual light and felicity. 
Obedience to the best conception is an immutable obligation and 
cannot issue in anything but the happiest results. This practi- 
cal truth, so simple, so clear and familiar, is the staple of much 
that follows in this little book. But there may be some novelty 
and advantage in the method of its presentation. 

The reader is advised that the slight narrative connected with 
the argument is strictly true ; and it is given on the supposition 
that it may add a little to the interest of the discussion, and in 
justification of the hope that the accompanying argument may 
possibly be of some service to a portion of the public, whether 
skeptics or believers. Numerous and various are the arms which 
military service employs, and sometimes the humblest are the 
best ; and not infrequently do we find the same principle ex- 
emplified in the moral warfare. Besides, a weapon must generally 

(5) 



VI. PBEFACK 

be tested before its value can be determined, and the public are 
the only test of intellectual and moral arms. 

Malebranche says that when a book is brought into the world 
no star presides over its nativity, and no astrologer would be bold 
enough to predict its future fate. In this uncertainty the author 
casts this little child into its ark of papyrus on the waters, watch- 
ing from a distance, unseen, like the Hebrew mother, to see what 
will become of it. It is his sincere and earnest prayer that it may 
help many a soul to a firmer faith and to a more unfaltering 
fidelity in the service of the *' great God and our Saviour Jesus 
Christ." 

This volume, whose object is religious and theological, is espe- 
cially commended to the attention of the Newark Conference of 
the M. E. Church, which sat in judgment not unkindly, and de- 
cided not unwisely, on the theology of the author's maiden book, 
" Evolution and Progress," whose object was not theological, but 
philosophicaL 

In view of the present logical difficulties of Theism admitted 
in our Evolution and Progress we have been asked what we are 
to do in the interval between the destruction of the old argu- 
ments and the establishment of the promised new ones ? To 
this inquiry this little book is my reply. 

Wm. I. Gill. 

December 30, 1876. 



CONTENTS. 

BOOK FIRST. 

THE CONCEPTION, OE A SUPERNATURAL IDEAL. 
CHAPTER L 

CONVEBSION OF A SkEPTIC 11 

CHAPTER n. 
Necessity of Ideates 18 

CHAPTER rn. 

OuB Ideates a Measuee of Our Woeth 25 

CHAPTER lY. 

Ctjltuee of Ideals 32 

CHAPTER Y. 
InflueinCE of Ideals 41 

CHAPTER YL 
Truth and Authoeity of Ideals 4:7 

CHAPTER YH. 

Conception of Theism and Evolution 52 

CHAPTER Yin. 
Supeeioeity of the Theistic Conception 59 

CHAPTER IX. 
Jesus 64 

CHAPTER X. 
Faith and Woeks 76 

CHAPTER XI. 
Rewaed of Fidelity , 84 



Yin PBEFAOK 

CHAPTER XIL 
An ExAMPiiE. 92 

CHAPTER Xm. 
The Redemptive Economy 98 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Can God Suftek ? 114 

CHAPTER XY. 
Atonement 119 

CHAPTER XYI. 
Okigin of the Christian Conception 143 

CHAPTER XYIL 
Empirical Objections 153 

CHAPTER XYin. 
Intuition ; oe, Subjective Influence 162 

BOOK SECOND. 
SUPERNATURAL EXPERIENCE. 

CHAPTER I. 
A Proposed Argument from Religious Experience 175 

CHAPTER n. 
Cautions and Distinctions 182 

CHAPTER HL 
Scientific IVIethod 187 

CHAPTER lY. 
Natural Law of Faith 192 

CHAPTER Y. 
Christian Law of Faith 195 

CHAPTER YL 

Elements and Phases of Christian Experience 205 

CHAPTER YIL 
Hindrances 221 

CHAPTER Yin. 
Hindrances Overcome 230 



BOOK FIRST. 



THE CO^TCEpxioj^ ; 



OK. 



A SUPEENATUEAL IDEAL, 



Christian Conception and Experience. 



BOOK FIEST.— THE CONCEPTIOK 



CHAPTEE I. 

INTEODUCTION. — CONTERSION OF A SKEPTIC. 

Some of the following arguments were substan- 
tially evolved in various discussions with a skepti- 
cal friend who was subsequently converted, and they 
were in some degree conducive to that result. I will 
therefore introduce the subject with a brief narrative. 
My acquaintance with, this friend had its origin in 
his admiration of a somewhat remarkable and sus- 
pected book. This book propounded ideas which at 
first view seemed to him scarcely reconcilable with 
orthodox doctrines. It gave abundant evidence, in 
his estimation, of the author's philosophical mastery 
of the :3ubject discussed, and of an accurate and 
comprehensive knowledge of the arguments which 
militate against Theism and Christianity. Subse- 
quently he learned that the author of this book is 

11 



12 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

not only a clergyman, but a clergyman wlio is 
thoroughly evangehcal in his faith. He then reflect- 
ed : " Here is a man who thoroughly understands 
the skeptical position, and all the difficulties which 
beset his own ; and if he can be orthodox, why 
might not I, if I had his explanation ? " Thus the 
earnest faith of the preacher, on the one hand, and 
the candor and hopeful intelhgence of the philoso- 
pher on the other hand, staggered his behef in the 
probable overthrow and desuetude of Christianity, 
and made him suspect that mental repression and 
ignorance of "Modern Thought" are not necessary 
conditions of devout Christian faith. 

It was when he was in this state of mind that I 
formed his acquaintance, which became quite inti- 
mate. We met frequently, and our interviews were 
generally occupied with discussions of some of the 
knotty points of philosophy or theology, especially 
the respective claims of Christianity and Evolution, 
and the difficulties attending both. 

It was always a pleasure to discuss a topic with 
him, because in opposition to my views he always 
adduced genuine reasons and arguments, and no- 
thing but these could in return produce any impres- 
sion on him, while these never failed. I always con- 
sidered that the degree of my success or failure in 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I3 

convincing him was an index of the weakness or of 
the clearness and force of my arguments. It was a 
frequent delight to me to see how pleasantly he 
recognized the force of an argument which succes- 
fully assailed his own position. Tet, honest and 
skeptic as he was, he seemed for a while more dis- 
posed to trust John Stewart Mill and Herbert Spen- 
cer than to accept the conclusions of logic. While 
admitting that Spencer and Mill were in some of their 
main points apparently refuted, and even self-refu- 
ted, yet he thought there must be some undetected 
sophism in my method, and that these men could 
not be guilty of any such conspicuous blunders as 
were pointed out. Such faith, however, gradually 
gave way and logic asserted its rightful ascendancy 
in his mind even against them. 

It was right in my friend to be cautious, and to 
suspend his judgment till he was satisfied that there 
was no mistake either in my premises or my reason- 
ing ; and he had a right to withhold his assent till 
he could examine the point more carefully, if there 
was anything more to learn on the subject. But the 
point I make is that this was not his ground of dis- 
sent to my conclusion, but that his groimd was one 
oi faith ; and he "could not believe,'' he said, " that 
Spencer or Mill could be guilty " of what was 



14 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

proved against them. In receiving them he had 
trusted his understanding, which he now distrusts, 
and he falls back on a faith which is confessedly 
groundless, and that in the face of an opposing in- 
teUigence. Through faith in Spencer, he, a phil- 
sophical skeptic, rejected or evaded an argument 
against Spencer ! 

This fault is by no means uncommon among 
skeptics. However honest they are, they recognize 
the force of an argument more readily and allow it 
more force in some directions than others ; and 
while they avowedly repudiate all opinions and 
faiths which have not a philosophical support, yet 
in some directions of their own choosing they them- 
selves cherish such opinions and faiths ; and some- 
times even they make themselves an authority 
against their own reasoning. The reader may never 
have read David Hume's " Inquiry Concerning Hu- 
man Understanding," but he has doubtless read of 
his remark that " the skeptic, when he awakes from 
his dream, will be the first to join in the laugh 
against himself." We are also told that Lord Her- 
bert, of Cherbury, printed a book against super- 
naturalism, and was divinely directed to do so in 
answer to a prayer asking the guidance of God and 
an expression of his will. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, I5 

Mr. K., of course, retorted this accusation of in- 
consistency on Christians, charging it on some of 
them of high standing and great abiUty. But the 
inconsistency of others is no justification of our own. 
It is alleged of Faraday that on being interrogated 
in reference to some of the articles of his religious 
creed, he rephed : " There I prostrate my reason." 
If he did say this, I suspect he attached a limited 
meaning to it. If the Bible is the Word of God we 
ought to submit our judgment to its decisions. To 
do this is not to prostrate our reason, but to obey, 
and so enthrone reason. To do this is the highest 
reason. Any other supposition is self contradictory ; 
for it affirms that it is better to follow a f alhble than 
an infallible judgment. In thus prostrating our 
reason before God, we preserve its dignity. With- 
out any evidence to the contrary, therefore, I shall 
assume that it was only in this significance that 
Faraday confessed to the prostration of his intellect. 
He believed in the divine authority of the Bible, and 
he acted accordingly, as a philosopher should ; and 
he beheved further that he had good reasons for this 
faith in the Scriptures. He was therefore right and 
reasonable throughout. That such a man as Lewes 
should adduce this passage in proof that Faraday 
was not as honest and rational in religion as in phys- 



16 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE 

ical science, with the implication that all the ortho- 
dox are similarly irrational, only shows that his 
own reason forsakes him when he touches on 
rehgion. The Scriptures never require or afldrm 
what is self contradictory. If they did I should so 
far reject them, since otherwise I should have to 
prostrate my reason absolutely. 

Nearly a year had rolled around since my first ac- 
quaintance with Mr. K . I had seen evidences 

that in some respects he had made some progress. 
He had acquired more respect for Christianity and 
its teachers, and more appreciation of Christian en- 
terprises. He was finally induced to attend a 
certain rehgious meeting, which was one of quiet 
power. After the meeting I spent an hour or more 
urging and arguing with him to make an immediate 
consecration of himself to Christ. Such an exhor- 
tation may seem premature, since he j^et questioned 
the existence of a personal God. But the soul often 
makes enormous advances in a few hours or even 
moments. I was assured that his false faiths were 
considerably shattered and paralyzed, and that 
therefore the void of skepticism might be suddenly 
filled with the true faith. 

Mr. K. grew more serious as our conversation pro- 
ceeded and I thought that he began to entertain a 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND FXPERIENOE. I7 

new hope and resolve. My last word to him that 
night was an exhortation to instant resolute and per- 
sistant faith in accordance with the Christian Con- 
ception. Next day, which was the Sabbath, he told 
me in the afternoon that, aided by a sermon which 
he had heard in the morning from the Rev. Dr. 

C ^ he had comphed with my exhortation, and 

was now trusting in Christ as his Sa\dour. He 
was afraid to say much more, but he indicated 
that he was dimly conscious of the dawning of 
a new life. In a few days this hfe was so full 
and rich in its conscious working that all doubt was 
dispelled, and he knew the truth of the Gospel from 
his own experience. 



18 GHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCE. 



CHAPTEE n. 



NECESSITY OF IDEALS. 



It is an interesting question, and not wholly 
foreign to a practical estimate of our life, how far 
any of us Uves in an ideal world by the practice of 
imagining what might be or ought to be. There is 
a yast difference in this respect between different 
minds. Some have small power of thought or im- 
agination to deviate from the forms of their own 
actual experiences, or even to reproduce them. Some 
who have a degree of power of ideal variation are 
so dominated by the perception of the need and ad- 
vantage of attending to the real and actual, that this 
power finds no adequate scope for its development. 

Hence it is in youth, before the stern realities and 
necessities of life and society have chrystalized the 
mind in rigid conformity with themselves, that the 
pleasures of reverie are generally indulged with the 
greatest freedom, and that the imagination is most 
frequently engaged in forming ideal combinations, in 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 19 

creating new worlds and forms of Kf e and new orders 
of experiences. Such employment as this is so 
fascinating, and the temptation to it is consequently 
so strong, that perhaps very few youths of active and 
fertile minds entirely escape the temptation or fail 
to yield in some degree to its power. Incited by 
what they have heard in the tales of the nursery and 
their earliest reading, perhaps the story of Jack the 
Giant Killer, the Forty Thieves, Aladin's Wonder- 
ful Lamp, the hateful old Blue Beard, and the equal- 
ly wonderful and healthier stories of the Bible ; and 
feeling troubled and perplexed in no very small de- 
gree by their own observations and experience in 
the real world which appears to them so strange and 
untractable, they have lain on the grass or sat on 
the fence, the door step or the curbstone, and found 
a quiet and intense delight in forming new econo- 
mics to suit themselves, unhampered by the obtru- 
sion of the hard unyielding forces of the real world 
in which they find themselves so restricted and 
crossed and thwarted. How much better to them 
appears their ideal creation than the real creation of 
God, and how much they wonder that God did not 
follow a plan somewhat Hke theirs ! 

Within certain hmits the indulgence and culture 
of such faculty of ideal thought may be of great 



20 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

value all througli life. This is exemplified in many 
of the most gifted minds. It is seen in nearly all 
the writings of Plato, and in some of them it is their 
most conspicuous element and their most potent 
charm. It was at the age of thirty-six that Sir 
Thomas More, the most witty and eloquent man of 
liis age, pubhshed his "Utopia." Of Bacon, the 
greatest Englishman of the next generation, it has 
been said that his imagination grew in power with 
his years. At the mature age of forty-nine he pub- 
hshed his " Wisdom of the Ancients," in which 
learning, reason and fancy are blended together hke 
the three primary colors of the spectrum. A good 
degree of this power under proper culture and dis- 
cipline enlarges the resources and the scope of the 
intellect, while it widens and quickens our power of 
sympathy ; and in various ways it is useful in all the 
complexities of life as an incitement and a guide 
ahke to the understanding and the heart. 

Our ideal of anything is our highest conception 
or idea of that thing, whatever it may be, whether it 
be a boot-jack or an empire or a world. These ideals 
are a logical necessity to all who think on any topic. 
The mechanic cannot make a tool or the simplest 
article of his craft without making it perfect or im- 
"Qerfect, according to his conception. If perfect, it 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 21 

meets his ideal, and if imperfect he has an ideal 
above it. A mere slave and dmdge who has no 
interest in his work and no thought or care except 
to execute the material task assigned him, needs and 
forms no ideals. He is only the instrument of other 
minds. But all who rise to the consideration of the 
proper method and aim and results of their toil, are 
so far artists, and have an ideal toward which and in 
the hght of which they work. 

In proportion as mental power and culture rises, 
this ideal action advances in definiteness and force 
and varied distinctness. Every statesman must 
have an ideal more or less full and definite of the 
method and ends of legislature and other functions 
of government. Every intelligent farmer must have 
some ideal toward which he works in the manage- 
ment of his estate. Every principal or president of 
a school will have some ideal of methods and ends 
to be practiced and pursued. All good hotel keepers 
and housekeepers must have an ideal of at least 
proximate definiteness and completeness respecting 
the style and management of their house. 

Thus we have a practical ideahsm which rules all 
Hfe, an ideal of effort and hope which presides over 
ail departments of intelligent activity. 

The law of intelligent action in view of ideals 



22 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

operates with full force in the sphere of religion and 
morals, since no where is there a wider and grander 
scope for an ideal activity than here. 

Savage and imbruted minds, which are scarcely 
above the dog or the ape in their intelligence, may 
be left out of account. "Where there is no thought 
there can be no ideals. Where there is thought so 
as to form secular ideals, sacred ideals also become 
not only possible, but necessary. The thought of 
finite power and worth necessarily suggests by the 
law of logical correlation the thought of infinite 
power and worth. This, however, will be consider- 
ed extremely vague, and it has never been of any 
great or definite force in the formation of rehgious 
ideals. It is sometimes affirmed that the infinite is 
a word without meaning. I consider this an error 
of the first magnitude both in philosophy and re- 
ligion. I hold that the idea of the infinite is as 
definite and clear as the idea of the finite. But as 
this is disputed, I do not here insist upon it. 

We come back to the finite. This we know to 
some extent. But our thought nearly always trans- 
cends our knowledge or experience ; and this rising 
superior to the thought, to the utmost of our 
abihty to think, is our ideal on that subject. As 
we can construct an ideal machine superior to any 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFERIENCK 23 

real machine known to us, so we can construct an 
ideal character superior at least in some respects to 
any known real character, that is, any that is knowTi 
to us immediately or by experience. Not only are 
we competent to this, but it is a necessity to us. We 
can no more escape it than we can escape the con- 
ception of the comparative degrees, good, better, 
best, of which it is an exempHfication. 

Any perceived limitation or defect in any character 
implies the conception of a superior character, which 
is our ideal. All known characters are known as 
imperfect by limitation and defect or by some posi- 
tive element of evil which mars them. An ideal of 
superior excellence, therefore, goes with us, and pre- 
sides over our contemplation and judgment of all 
known characters. 

This ideal also may be said to always rise in a 
cultivated mind with the character contemplated ; 
and it must do so to whatever height, short of in- 
finite perfection, the character rises ; and in all cases, 
except the infinite, the ideal will tower above the 
real. This ideal is therefore above all possible de- 
grees of the finite ; and what is that but infinite ? 
Thus by another route we come to an ideal of the 
infinite as the necessary consequence of thinking 
the finite real. But still I shall not here base any 



24 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

argument on this. I shall be content with the ad- 
mission of the indisputable fact that we all have 
moral and spiritual ideals. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXFEBIENCE. 25 



CHAPTEE III. 

OUB IDEALS A MEASURE OF OUR WORTH. 

It is an obvious fact that there is a remarkable 
correspondence between men's ideals and their in- 
tellectual and moral rank. The ideals of Jugger- 
naut, Kalee, Jupiter and Jesus mark the different 
grades of moral and spiritual elevation of their 
several subjects and devotees. There is no philoso- 
pher who does not claim and receive a degree of re- 
spect or homage in proportion to the acknowledged 
dignity of his conception of God and the universe. 
On this ground, as well as others, Plato is assigned 
the highest place among ancient philosophers. On 
this ground chiefly Plato himself exalts Socrates to 
the zenith of distinction. On this principle Mr. 
Spencer tries at times to show that his theory is su- 
perior to that of Christianity, which he stigmatizes 
as "the carpenter theory." 

We find, too, that as individuals, tribes and na- 
tions rise in character they rise in their conceptions 



26 CEBISTIAJSr CONCEPTION AND EXFERIENGR 

and their ideals. Tliis is so constant that we can 
with equal truth and propriety put it the other way, 
that their characters rise with their ideals. 

There are exceptions to this in the case of these 

who have suddenly fallen from a previous moral ele- 
vation and come under the dominion of their appe- 
tites and passions. This is exemplified to some ex- 
tent in all forms of sin and vice and crime. 

But these form a peculiar class among the vicious. 
Conscious of their moral fall and degradation, they 
inwardly abhor themselves for their own wrong doing 
and wrong feeling. This is an element in them which 
always commands our respect as well as pity, and it 
inspires a just hope that with a change of circumstances 
they will recover themselves. On the other hand, 
the genuine and born criminal of every grade is un- 
conscious of moral degradation and is therefore devoid 
of shame and self-condemnation; and till this per- 
ception and feeling are awakened there is no hope 
respecting him. It is the litter lack of a moral ideal 
which constitutes his deepest degradation. 

This contains and proves our principle, that our 
ideals are a measure of our worth. I say a measure, 
for rdo not mean to say they are the only measure. 
For when two persons who have the same ideal iu 
the main differ greatly in their actual conformity to 



CKRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENOE. 27 

it, we attribute to them a difference of worth. But 
this practical test transcends our subject, which seeks 
or afl&rms an ideal test of character ; and the facts we 
have adduced show that all men recognize the exis- 
tence of such a test, and that this test is expressed in 
the above proposition respecting our moral and 
spiritual ideals. 

This test is as broad as human thought, and it 
therefore takes on as many forms as there are lines 
of human action and development. The artist ranks 
according to his power of elevated ideal creation, and 
it is the same with the poet. That statesman is con- 
sidered the greatest who combines with the loftiest 
and broadest views of national polity the wisest and 
most feasible methods of practical approximation to 
the realization of those views. That teacher is also 
the best and wisest who combines the most exalted 
theory of education with the nearest approximation 
to its attainment. All these would be only quacks 
or empirics without their theory or ideal, and the rel- 
ative dignity and worth of their ideal constitutes 
their chief relative intellectual distinction. 

The question of practicality does not come in here. 
This is accidental to the individual, and depends on 
external circumstances. If I am teaching children 
or barbarians, my practical achievement will be small ; 



28 CHBI8TIAN CONCEFTION AND EXFEBIENCK 

but my ideal of what an educated man should be 
would not necessarily suffer any abatement ; and if 
my ideal is far inferior to that whicli you cherisli, I 
am thereby demonstrated to be myself inferior to you. 
These ideals are the measure of our respective men- 
tal breadth and culture, and mental aspiration for our- 
selves or others. 

This must hold with augmented emphasis in the 
realm of philosophy, where we are constructing an 
ideal universe, including, therefore, all possible ideals. 
Here, where there is scope for all highest faculties, 
and work enough to tax them to the utmost, our 
work unerringly exhibits our weakness or our 
strength, and the elevation or the platitude of our 
conceptions and taste. 

. We do not forget that it is the object of philosophy 
to construct theories or systems which conform to 
fact, and not to please and delude ourselves with 
ideal pictures and unreal fancies. But, I ask, what 
guarantee, except his own judgment, has the theorist 
or logician that his base is not inadequate or erroneous 
in some particular? If his result is ignoble, may I 
not, therefore, come in and saj^ with as much logic 
and reason as this theorist can claim, that I cannot 
accept such a result, because I have an experience 
and a conception which it does not explain, and that, 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 29 

therefore, there must be some mistake either in his 
premises or his reasonings from them ? Further, if 
this theorist says, or otherwise indicates, that his 
theory is his ideal proper — that is, all that he desires 
and all that he can conceive of worth and excellence^ 
is not this an explicit declaration of the limit and 
highest altitude of his mind ? If, then, this theory 
or ideal of this man is low and vulgar compared 
with the ideals or theories of some other men, are not 
his mind and character low and vulgar compared 
with theirs ? On this ground, I claim the riglit to 
reject and scorn, detest and antagonize with unutter- 
able vehemence, a theory of mere material sensism. 
Whether this theory be true to fact or not, I should 
feel it a mental and moral degradation to accept it as 
my ideal, and therefore I am right in saying I will 
not. I am, therefore, right in denouncing the universe 
as wrong, if this base theory is true ; and so its advo- 
cate himself is wrong in that case, in being content- 
edly true to fact. 

I think, moreover, that the very existence of my 
ideal theory, as so superior in character to this as- 
serted true theory, disproves the truth of the latter. 
I hold that it is an absurdity, amounting to a self- 
contradiction, to suppose that I, a mere infinitesimal 
fragment, who do not comprehend myself, and but 



30 CERI8TIAN GONGEPTION AND EXPEBIENGE. 

little or aught of anything around me, should be able 
to be a judge of the universe, and condemn it, and, 
rising high above it, look down with supremest con- 
tempt upon its grand totality ! 

But this I do, if the atheistic sensist theory is cor- 
rect. It is true, I know, that the less may despise 
the greater, through incomprehension. But this theo- 
ry, and such abominations as I am execrating, I 
comprehend perfectly, and I hate them as much. If 
it were the true theory of the universe, I should 
then, with full comprehension,- detest and despise 
the whole totality of the universal force and cause 
of all things, myself included, as ineflfably beneath 
myself. But that is impossible and absurd. Yet I 
do thus judge, and feel rightly and knowingly toward 
this theory ; therefore, that theory does not represent 
the universe. It is a base-born misrepresentation, 
more detestable than any ordinary falsehood, because 
it is alike in its intrinsic nature and origin and con- 
sequence of a viler quality. 

It is a self-contradiction to suppose that I can rise 
above the forces to which I owe my existence, and all 
that I am. As nothing but a force can do anything, 
and as nature is one force, constant and immutable 
througli all change, as witnessed by the law of the 
conservation of energy, therefore this force must at all 



CHRISTIAN CONGEFTION AND EXPERIENCE. 31 

times be at least equal to all conscious existence and 
unconscious operations. Our Author and the force 
which dominates our souls cannot be sensible matter 
which is inferior to thought and volition. Our Author 
is a power which is behind the material universe, and 
works constantly in it and througb it 



32 CHRISTIAN CONOEFTION AND EXPEBIENCK 



CHAPTEE IV. 



CULTURE OF IDEALS. 



We have seen that as an ideal is that which ex- 
presses the highest conceptions, hopes and aspirations 
of its subject, so the relative dignity of ideals, other 
things being equal, proves the relative worth and 
dignity of their subjects. 

This is a great point gained. It is a point which 
all who possess any moral and spiritual intuition 
can understand and appreciate in some degree ; and, 
with the ideal of Jesus before them and within them, 
they look down from a very lofty height on material- 
ism ; and up there they are quite safe from all attacks 
of materialistic argument. What we heartily detest 
and despise will be powerless to convince us, what- 
ever its pretense of logic. In the exalted state and 
position above conceived nothing will appear so logi- 
cal as the inference that the loftier ideal is the shadow 
^ast by an equally lofty real. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 33 

In proceeding I call attention to an obvious fact 
of very great importance, that tHere is a perpetual 
interaction between our ideals and our intellectual 
and moral character, so that they are forever modifying 
each other. An exalted ideal attained and preserved 
naturally operates as a celestial magnet to elevate the 
character ; and, on the other hand, anj^ progress of the 
latter always advances the former. The culture of 
the real and the culture of the ideal, therefore, al- 
ways go together. This is not a known fact only, 
but also a psychological and moral necessity. We 
may possibly advance in the moral ideal without ad- 
vancing in the real, because we may wilfully refuse, 
or through temptation and weakness fail, to conform 
to an acknowledged obligation. But we cannot ad- 
vance in the moral real without making some pro- 
gress either in the distinctness or the conscious value 
and force or the elevation of the moral ideal. 

Hence the obligation to cultivate the highest ideals, 
and especially the moral and spiritual ideal, as a 
means of cultivating the moral and spiritual real. 
This cultivation should be earnest, deliberate and 
constant. Of course, this is nothing new, but only 
that which we have heard from the beginning ; and 
its age and familiarity constitute a part of its cre- 
dentials, for if it were new it could not be true. Its 



34 CHRISTIAir CONCEPTION' AND EXPEBIENCR 

originality consists only in the connection in which, 
it is used and in the end for which it is employed. 

The obligation and advantage of cultivating ideals 
in all departments of human action are universally 
acknowledged and acted on. This is not only true 
of the votaries of art. It is equally true of the cul- 
tivators of science and philosophy, and it is true 
in all intelligent prosecution of the material and 
social tasks of life. With every advance in achieve- 
ment, there will be an advance of the ideal which 
will promote another advance in the real. 

In this eager effort after ideal plans and then after 
their realization, a plurality of ideals in their practi- 
cal action will often come into competition, when the 
inferior will be replaced by the superior so far as 
their relative merits are recognized. 

In practical life it is, of course, the practical results 
which- control the preferences. But in works of pure 
art there is no such ground of preference. Here the 
most perfect art will always carry off the palm ; and 
where there is any symbolism the loftiest, the purest 
and the most perfect ideal representation will always 
by the best judges be preferred, as a matter of course. 

While philosophy always has an ideal, yet unlike 
art, that ideal is not sought alone, nor is it valued 
generally by itself alone, nor is a philosophical theory 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 35 

alwaj^s conceived of in the liglit of an ideal. Con- 
formity to facts, and tlie practical results may occupy 
our attention, and by these wholly or chiefly the theory 
may be judged. This is all right. No theory is 
worth anything which cannot stand these tests. But 
we may at our option leave these out of account for 
. a while, and contemplate the philosophical theory as 
an ideal, intellectual and moral 

In doing this, we are guilty of nothing that is 
wildly fanciful or unphilosophical. Philosophy is 
pursued for its intellectual satisfactions, and, there- 
fore, on the assumption or in the hope that every step 
of progress will be a pleasure, approximating perfec- 
tion as we suppose ourselves approximating a perfect 
philosophy, so that the pleasure and the philosophy 
will culminate together. Hence, from the very nature 
of the thing, all theories of the universe are philo- 
sophical ideals. They are advanced and maintained 
because they satisfy the minds of their originators 
and advocates ; and if conceived and held as perfect 
theories, they are perfect ideals. Therefore, it is just 
and lawful, at our option, to contemplate them in 
this light exclusively, and in this sole light to test 
their value. 

As this resolution of philosophical theories into 
philosophical ideals is based on the assertion tl^at 



36 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

philosophy seeks and expects satisfaction as the re- 
sult of its discoveries, there may in some minds be a 
a slight hesitancy in yielding to it, on the ground of 
a prevalent opinion of no great authority and less 
wit. Lessing has said that truth and error being 
both offered to him, he would prefer error, that he 
might have the pleasure of seeking the truth. This, 
with other such dreams, has given rise to the senti- 
ment, which has become quite sentimental, that the 
pursuit of truth is better than its acquisition. All this 
expresses the feeling only of those who never valued 
truth, and never sought it as the pearl of great price. 
We seek only what we want to get, because of its 
estimated worth or value. 

To speak of seeking what we value less than 
the search itself is absurd, for such activity is 
not a search at all, but an amusement, or a process 
of mental gymnastics. Besides, to belittle truth in 
this style is profane. It confounds and grinds all 
philosophy, all religion and all art, and the entire 
system of things into insignificance, for these consti- 
tute ''the truth of things;" and truth is nothing of 
any great importance, of less importance than a 
chaos of aimless activities, as blind and as indifferent 
respecting their ultimate end as the atoms of Lucre- 
tius. A more shallow, baseless and suicidal notion 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 37 

never floated in the atmosphere of Bedlam. I feel a 
warm and inspiring excitement in the pursuit of 
truth, but only because I value the truth, and hope 
to acquire it, though in fragments, step by step, in an 
eternal progress, enriched by every acquisition, and, 
at the same time, incited to fresh pursuit by the hope 
of further progress. 

Philosophy is the love of wisdom, not the love of 
a search which has no coveted prize in view. This 
wisdom, acquired, is a pleasure ; and if we have 
acquired such wisdom as to be able, in outline, to 
give a theory of the universe, it constitutes our ideal 
of the universe as expressing our conceptions of it, 
and BO giving to us entire intellectual satisfaction. 
We are, therefore, logically and philosophically, en- 
titled to treat all such theories as ideals. 

Thus contemplated and treated, the loftier, the 
broader and grander theories or ideals are to be pre- 
ferred, and they will be by those who can conceive 
them. The inferior mind will be satisfied with the 
inferior theory or ideal, while the better or superior 
mind will demand and choose the superior theory or 
ideal. An ignoble theory is, therefore, a condemna- 
tion to him who holds it, for he likes it, and so is 
like it. 

Here skepticism interpolates the inquiry : " But, 



38 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

suppose he is compelled to accept it by the evidence 
which is presented to him, and that he accepts it on 
account of its evidence, and not on account of its 
agreeableness to him, or its congeniality with his pre- 
dilections ? Is he not bound to accept the evidence 
and the theory which it supports ?" *^ Yes," I answer^ 
*^ in such a case he must accept, but who or what is 
the guarantee that his theory is the product of evi- 
dence pure and simple, and entirely irrespective of 
his own disposition and mental inclination? There 
is none. The fact is, we can never surmount our- 
selves, nor leave ourselves entirely out of account. 
Our own state and inclinations are always a powerful 
though subtle factor in the evidence in all such cases. 
Hence, different men will read the same objective 
evidence quite differently ; and on this account only, 
or chiefly, they attiiin different theories or ideals of 
the universe. 

Now, if it were the objective evidence purely 
which determined the theory of tha materialist, and 
if it were a theory only, and not an ideal, he would 
be dissatisfied with it. He would accept it only as a 
bankrupt accepts his misfortune. He would not be 
its ardent propagandist as if it were a panacea, and 
he the fortunate quack who had just discovered it, 
proud of his great discovery, and expecting emolu- 



CKRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 39 

ment and renown as his appropriate reward. Instead 
of that he would shut it up in his desk or dryly com- 
municate it to his friends as *^ a most lame and impo- 
tent conclusion/' as something which comes far short 
of his ideal. But in this case he would question the 
truth of such theory, and the fullness or the relative 
force of the evidence. He would be likely to pro- 
ceed to say, ^4t cannot be true. It is not a satisfac- 
tory explanation of things. According to my view, 
it contradicts instead of explaining some of the phe- 
nomena of my own consciousness, and utterly fails to 
meet either the intellectual or moral demands of my 
nature;" -and his loftier ideal inevitably becomes 
his theory. If the lower theory satisfies his mind and 
heart, it is his ideal ; and he will boast of it, propagate 
it and glory in it, and in so doing he puts himself on 
the low level of his theory. On the other hand, if it 
does not thus give him satisfaction, he will have no 
interest in it, cannot rest in it, cannot positively ac- 
cept it as the true theory ; and thus it must give way 
to the higher conception or ideal as his working hy- 
pothesis or theory. This is the process which reveals 
the true art and spirit of philosophy, and which will 
command the highest suffrages of the philosophical 
guild through all the ages. 

Up toward this style and spirit the true thinker 



40 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCK 

inevitably works. The highest law of our existence 
enjoins us to work up perpetually toward the highest 
ideals of beauty, truth and goodness ; and whoever 
is content with the inferior and the imperfect may 
excite our pity, but can never command our homage 
or our approval, unless we belong to the same low 
class with himself. 



I 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEUIENCK 41 



CHAPTER V. 

INFLUENCE OF IDEALS. 

No one needs any evidence that ideals are not 
wlioUy nninfluential ; and it is very obvious to all 
that they sometimes wield a very great power. Yet 
at other times their influence seems to be quite small, 
and at still other times it seems to vanish entirely. 
We ought to determine the law of this variation, and 
so acquire a new principle of practical importance. 
This I think can be done, and the principle then can 
be applied in the development of my argument. 

The first principle is that all ideals which involve 
the ideal of action, as all ideals of the universe and 
of life and its issues do, are influential in proportion 
as they are agreeable or satisfactory throughout. So 
far as there is anything disagreeable in the ideal it 
will operate against its attempted realization, and in 
that proportion it will fail to be practically influen- 
tial. 

It is hence that Christianity often practically fails 



42 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION- AND EXPERIENCK 

with, bad men, because it contains elements wbich. 
tbey dislike. Everlasting bonor and happiness 
charm them, but boliness repells them. And as they 
must repent of sin and forsake it, and be transformed 
into the holy image of God in order to the attain- 
ment of the Christian ideal, they approve the better, 
and the worse pursue, because they are more under 
the dominion of their depraved inclinations than of 
their better moral judgments. It is thus only par- 
tially their ideal. 

A second principle is, that, other things being 
equal, the loftier and nobler the ideal the better and 
nobler will be its influence. This is the law of their 
operation. This hardly needs any elucidation. While 
true genius is an original fountain of power, it 
grows by cultivation, and the best products of human 
genius are the best means of its culture. A writer^s 
style is affected by the style which he is most in the 
habit of reading. Bad models in oratory, poetry and 
painting have always been an irreparable damage to 
their imitators and admirers. On the other hand, the 
most consummate genius in art has been developed 
only by the study of the best models. 

It is also characteristic of a genius unexhausted 
and progressive, or capable of further development, 
that it always has an ideal, either of its own creation 



CEBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 43 

or in the works of other men, which is above its 
actual attainment, and toward which it never ceases 
to work. Common men, men devoid of genius, may 
attain their ideal, and be satisfied ; and, as a conse- 
quence, they are as stationary, but not as sublime, as 
Oriental monuments. It is significantly related of a 
distinguished painter that, in his later years^ he sat 
down and wept, as he finished a picture, because it 
fulfilled his ideal — since he considered this fact a 
proof of the decadence of his intellect. 

Moral and religious ideals must also be effective 
for good or evil, according to their character. This 
will not be questioned, and it needs no proof But 
it may need elucidation, that we may be understood. 

This moral and religious ideal is not to be consid- 
ered as identical with intellectual power and develop- 
ment. Vast intelligence is compatible with exceed- 
ingly low moral conceptions. The moral ideal may 
remain stationary, while our ideals and achievements 
in every other direction are advancing. On the 
other hand, moral culture, with little or no intellect- 
ual or aesthetic culture, is possible, and by no means 
without example. We cannot, therefore, be justified 
in confounding these two elements ; and we are for- 
bidden to ascribe all moral progress to the progress 
of knowledge as its necessary effect. The acknowl- 



44 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

edged superiority of Europe to Cathay, and of mod- 
ern to ancient times, does not consist in knowledge 
only, or in the progress of science only, which, it is 
alleged, has improved both, morals and religion, as 
well as social usages. The Greeks were intellectually 
superior to the Asiatics before the Christian era, 
while there is no evidence of their superior virtue. 
The evidence is all on the other side. The moral 
practices of the Grreeks, and also of the Eomans, after 
they became great and rich, were ineffably infamous, 
and their principles were little better, as taught by 
their greatest masters, and practiced by their best 
characters, while in their earlier and less cultured 
history their manners were more pure. It is a familiar 
fact that the greatest minds may be wicked, and the 
smallest may be pure and virtuous. Never was any- 
thing more blind than the notion that the progress of 
intelligence secures the progress of virtue. It has 
often been just the reverse, as it was among the 
Corinthians and the Athenians, as well as the Eo- 
mans, in the most conspicuous periods of their his- 
tory. It was so with the Italians in the fifteenth 
century and the early part of the sixteenth. 

Where moral principles are firmly held, and there 
is a disposition to conform to them, the progress of 
knowledge will guide in their application, and lead 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCK 45 

to ever wiser and higher applications ; and it is here 
that knowledge promotes virtue ; and yet it is not 
virtue that it here advances properly, but only the 
methods of its exercise. It is thus that the progress 
of knowledge has been of vast advantage to society 
by widening and elevating our conceptions of the 
application of moral principles. But the progress of 
knowledge (secular) has no necessary tendency to 
make men embrace moral principles and conform to 
them. It very often and very extensively operates 
the other way by generating pride, and by revealing 
the worldly advantages of wrong and the methods of 
their attainment by wicked courses ; and hence this 
has always been made a point of caution and admo- 
nition with the wisest of moralists. 

To the '^ Influence of Ideals" must be ascribed, in 
pre-eminent degree, the unapproachably mighty 
power which the Bible has wielded, and is growingly 
wielding, in the moral uplifting of the world. ^' The 
first and great commandment," together with '^ the 
second, which is like unto it," enunciated by Moses, 
that "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, might, mind and strength, and thy neighbor 
as thyself," is the unchanging Biblical Ideal. It 
always shines clear and unapproachably above us, or 
most ol us ; but it is nevertheless a boundless in- 



46 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCK 

spiration, and the mightiest of all attractions and 
incitements in every good direction. This is a joy- 
forever, as a thing of supremest beauty, and it is, at 
the same time, the Christian Endymion^s transporting 
vision which incites him to the most heroic and 
never-ceasing endeavor and pursuit, in the hope that 
he may yet embrace and possess it for evermore. 



I 



CEHmTIAN CONCEFTION A2W EXFEBIENCK 47 



CHAPTER VI. 

TRUTH AND AUTHORITY OF IDEALS. 

The vast and evident influence of ideals confers 
lapon them a corresponding authority, and this au- 
thority rises or falls with their relative worth and 
dignity ; and the highest ideal has always the highest 
authority. This authority is a claim not only on our 
acceptance, but also on our practical allegiance and 
obedience. 

In works of art there are difierent grades of 
dignity, all of which are legitimate ; while yet in- 
ferior minds will prosecute the inferior lines of art 
and superior minds the superior lines of art. 

In theories which involve the moral and religious 
elements of character there is no such admissible dis- 
tinction between the high and the low. Each theory 
is exclusive of all others, and is to be accepted to 
the rejection of all others, or it is to be rejected on 
the score of not being as good as some others. 

For all ideals are invested with an intrin- 



4S CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEEIENCK 

sic and indefeasible authority. They are not 
regarded as ideals except when considered as the 
proper objects of effort and hope, and as having a 
right to command our action and obedience as well 
as our admiration. Our ideal is our king, and, it is 
its prerogative to rule our life, and it always com- 
mands us to strive to be like itself ; and consequent- 
ly it holds an authority and a power to condemn and 
chastise where its authority is disregarded. This is 
conspicuously recognized in the fine arts ; and if the 
conception of an ideal is less prominent elsewhere, it 
is still true that wherever the conception is entertain- 
ed it has a dominating influence in all directions. For 
instance, no one will admit that a man is a statesman 
unless he has some proper ideal of society, and works 
steadily toward it with energy and practical wisdom. 
It is not enough to have an image or a conception 
which is called an ideal ; but it must be the object 
toward which all his thought and efforts are directed ; 
because only as it is thus pursued, as Endymion pur- 
sued his transporting vision, is it truly treated as an 
ideal. 

The ideal gives the law to conscience, or rather, it 
constitutes the law of conscience. To suppose we 
can disregard it with self-justification is self-contra- 
dictory. In pronouncing it to be our ideal, we pro- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 49 

nounce it to be our highest law, because the highest 
end and object of hope and effort. To deny its au- 
thority is to say that the best and conformity to the 
best is no better than the inferior and conformity to 
the inferior. Our moral and religious ideal has, 
therefore, the right of supreme and absolute domina- 
tion. Nothing can ever be brought into competition 
with it or be allowed to question or divide or in any 
wise diminish its authority. 

At the very least the highest ideal must be made 
the paramount working hypothesis of all men, be- 
cause, whether proved or not, it is necessarily the 
most beneficent agency that can be employed or 
conceived, and its effects must be correspondent to 
its nature. 

But are we not entitled, if not required, to go 
farther than this ? We have seen that our highest 
ideal is our highest law of action, else it is not an 
ideal, and only so far as we endeavor to conform to 
it is it treated as an ideal. Now, suppose we had an 
absolutely perfect ideal, and that this ideal is presented 
in the Scripture, this would then be our supreme law 
of duty. This ideal can never be positively dis- 
proved, as we cannot comprehend infinity, and so 
can never prove that, there is not an infinitely per- 
fect being, and that the known universe is not con- 



50 CimiSTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 

str acted on the best possible plan. Hence there is 
nothing to stand in the way of its being our supreme 
law, and it must claim imperial and absolute domin- 
ion. 

Thus obeyed, it must necessarily prove a benefi- 
cent agency of the most exalted kind. 

But if, after all, it should not be true, then in the 
highest possible result and form of life error would 
be the supreme authority and end, and error, ignor- 
ance and falsehood would be better than truth, know- 
ledge and veracity. But this contradicts the very- 
conception and nature of knowledge and veracity 
and their opposites, and it contradicts the ideal itseK 
which includes all mental and moral power and ex- 
cellence ; and it thus contradicts and refutes itself. 
It also, consequently, contradicts all science and phi- 
losophy, which assume that knowledge is desirable, 
and noble, and one of the chief ends of our exis- 
tence, and one of the prime elements of our felicity 
and glory. 

It is possible that supposing the truth of all 
things were attained it might not give satisfaction, 
might not be, or be deemed, the good in the highest con- 
ceivable sense ; and from this it follows that it is 
also possible that the supreme idea of the good is not 
true to fact. This cannot be disputed, and here our 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENGE. 51 

argument partially fails. It is not a logical demon- 
stration. Yet it lias a very high, degree of probabili- 
ty, because it appeals to the principle on which, 
nevertheless, all science and philosophy proceed 
that the true is the good, and as such they seek it, 
else they would not seek it at all. Besides this, it 
has a just and moral claim on our practical accep- 
tance and action as a " working hypothesis ; " and he 
who is recreant to its claims is morally and philosophi- 
cally at fault ; and he is also inconsistent, for he acts 
on his highest ideal in all or most other connections 
and acknowledges the obligation as a universal prin- 
cipl-l,^ Therefore, to disregard it here in relation to 
the highest conceivable ideal and end is a flagrant 
impropriety and immorality. 



52 CHBISTIAN CONGEFTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

CONCEPTION OF THEISM ANT> EVOLUTION. 

If it is agreed that our ideals reflect ourselves, 
that by the first law of our existence we are bound 
to improve them to the utmost, and that in a com- 
parison of ideals the superior is always to be prefer- 
red. It would be in order here to compare several phil- 
osophical theories, to see which, on these principles, 
is to be preferred. But I am not here seeking a phil- 
osophical theory so much as a reUgious one, which, 
of course, ought to be philosophical. On this, as 
well as on many other grounds, the Bible is my 
theory and ideal. I propose to compare this, not 
with all opposing theories, but with the best that 
the human mind has ever attained mthout revela- 
tion or in opposition to revelation. If Christian 
Theism is better than the best of these, it is better 
than all the rest, and so they need not be noticed. 
Acknowledged atheism, pure and simple, can admit 
of no comparison on the question. Wlioever is sat- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEUIENCE, 53 

isfied with this theory so as to adopt it as his ideal 
of the universe, whatever its alleged grounds, is es- 
sentially and deliberately base and beastly, and I 
should consider that every house and family ought 
to be closed against his presence and influence, or 
admit him only as the diseased victims of vice are 
admitted into a hospital. 

There are, indeed, atheists, or those who are doubt- 
ful in regard to Theism, who are neither exception- 
ally base nor vicious. They are better than their 
creed. They have been fortunate, in some respects, 
in their birth and training. They are agreeable as- 
sociates and trusty friends, of good manners and re- 
spectable morals. They see that atheism is intrin- 
sically base and debasing. They assent to it as 
probably the truth only, because, as they suppose, 
they are compelled by the force of evidence. Bat 
they are glad that others do not see as they do, and 
that to others Theism and its moral incitements and 
restraints are possible, and appear logically neces- 
sary. They will therefore favor religion, though they 
believe it not. Their atheism or skepticism is un- 
welcome, and Theism is virtually their ideal. These 
are not the leprous and plaugue-smitten characters 
of which I have spoken as so ineff'ably repulsive and 
abhorrent, who are satisfied with theii* atheism, and 



54 GBBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

make it their supreme ideal. Both are injurious ; 
but the refinement of the former may be a benefit, 
while the latter are unmitigably and grossly evil, and 
defile at a distance as well as by a touch. 

There is an indefinite variety of theories which 
include the affirmation of the existence of God. 
These may be divided into two classes, those which 
consider God as a personal being and a real Creator, 
and those which consider God as an impersonality 
who unfolds himself in the processes of the so-called 
created universe, and who thus constitutes the total- 
ity of the universe. The former is Theism proper, 
and its advocates are Theists. The advocates of 
the latter theory are variously designated as Deists, 
Pantheists, Evolutionists. Some who have gone 
under the name of Deists have perhaps been Theists, 
and some Deists may have been classed as Theists, 
because the classification here made has not been 
heretofore adopted. 

These two classes are respectively naturalists and 
supernaturalists. Theism affirms a supernatural 
creationism, that the thing created is not God nor 
ever was, so that it is not unfolded from HimseK, 
but simply caused to be because He wills it ; that 
the creature or creation is frequently operated by 
the same supjernatural agency, and that thus the 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 55 

Bible has been given to us (at least in part), and its 
miracles performed. Deism proper, including evolu- 
tion and pantheism, and any other non-theistic sys- 
tem which affirms a God, is in every particular the op- 
posite of all this. It affirms that properly there 
has been no creation, and no deviation from the 
strict and necessary operation of natural force from 
all eternity. There are some, indeed, who have rowed 
in two boats, admitting (verbally at least) a creation, 
but denpng all subsequent supematuraUsm, while 
others, affirming that the universe is an evolution 
from Deity, have denied the supernaturaHsm of crea- 
tion proper, and have yet admitted subsequent su- 
pernatural interpositions. (This latter is the meta- 
physical position of many professed Christians, 
among whom Sir Wm. Hamilton is conspicuous). 
This is not Christianity ; it is in vital antagonism to 
Christianity ; but as these writers are not aware of 
it, and as they would no doubt have modified their 
metaphysics had they known it, we shall rank them 
according to their creed and not according to their phi- 
losophy. They have thought that their conception 
of creation, so-called, an evolution from Deity, is the 
only possible one, and that this therefore must be 
the proper Scripture doctrine, as, of course, it must 
be, if no other idea is possible. 



56 CHRISTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPEBIENCE, 

It is certain that in no age or country in the world 
has any other idea been attained by philosophy. 
The learning of Hamilton assures us of this. It re- 
quires, indeed, no very learned investigation into 
the history of philosophical opinions, to convince 
us that all philosophies of all ages and cHmes, are 
but different species or varieties of pure naturalistic 
evolution — ^not, indeed, always self-consistent, as er- 
ror never can be for a great while together, yet con- 
sistent in repeatedly returning to this idea that the 
universe is not an absolute creation, that in some 
way or other it had an eternal existence in God, 
and is only evolved from Him, and is He in a 
state of evolution, and that He thus includes in 
Himself the whole sum of being, which never, in any 
degree, can receive any addition or diminution, and 
that all possible changes are but the eternal evolu- 
tion of the eternal one. Here all philosophers of 
India, Egypt, Assyria, Greece and modem times 
agi^ee ; and if any Christian philosopher has hag- 
gled at this, and affirmed supernatural interposition, 
he has spoiled it all by showing us a pantheistic 
creation — an evolution only in which God and the 
universe are identified. 

"When we come to the Scriptures, lea\dng our 
philosophical theories out of sight for a while, and 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 57 

proceed to expound them in accordance with the 
usual laws of exegesis, we find a different idea. 
We find that God and the world are always spoken 
of as absolutely dual, that God is described as a 
person who existed "before the world was," that 
the world began to be at His Tohtion, that it is still 
upheld by the word of His power, that man is a 
responsible being, who can act contrary alike to na- 
ture and to his Maker's will. From Genesis to Be- 
velations the Bible is uniformly expounded among 
the orthodox in accordance with this doctrine of ab- 
solute creation. Yet, such is the littleness of our 
nature, that having thus expounded the Scriptures, or 
accepted such interpretation, we turn to philosophy, 
and with perfect naivete subscribe to a system of 
evolution. We see and understand the Scripture 
idea when we look at it ; but we become bhnd and 
self-oblivious when we turn to philosophy. It is 
clear that from the beginning until now, the Bible 
has been immeasurably in advance of philosophy, 
clear and definite in the assertion of a doctrine 
which philosophy cann,ot yet understand, but which 
is perfectly clear to the commonest mind as he reads 
the Scriptures. 

We are now, however, able to give a philosophical 
statement and defence of the Bible Doctrine, and 
thus make it a consistent Ideal. 



58 CHBISTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPEBIENOE. 

" It will be agreed that the Infinite is the greatest 
possible Being, because, if it could be greater, it 
would be finite, and so to deny this is self-contradic- 
tory. The infinite must also include self-conscious 
personality, because this is more than unconscious- 
ness and impersonaUty ; and, therefore, it must in- 
clude a personality of the highest and greatest 
possible attributes, if there is such a Being. Power 
added to being is greater than being only. The 
power to increase power or being at will is greater 
than the absence of such power, for not to be able 
to do it is a limitation of power. Infinite Being 
must, therefore, include a self-conscious personality 
that possesses a limitless power of absolute creation, 
else it is not infinite. It follows that infinity cannot 
include all real and possible being, for in that case it 
cannot create, or its creation is only seK-enlarge- 
ment, either of which would prove it finite. The 
infinite, therefore, does not necessarily include all 
being, but only a being of limitless power and ex- 
cellence, who creates a finite, and who can create or 
annihilate at will." 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 59 



CHAPTEE Ym. 

SUPEEIOKITY OF THE THEISTIC CONCEPTION. 

Evolution gives us a mighty eternal force, but 
whether that force is conscious and purposeful is a 
subject of debate even among evolutionists them- 
selves. By necessity of nature, and without any 
vohtion except one which is itself necessitated, and 
is -thus only a necessary antecedent and subsequent 
in an eternal claim or succession, this power, in the 
succession of ages, evolves the worlds and their 
phenomena as modes of itself or himself. But 
whether he knows and fore-knows, or wills or not, he 
cannot make one hair white or black, otherwise than 
as it turns out to be. He is unable, in any particu- 
lar, to modify the course of nature, for good or e\il, 
of any sentient being, so that he is neither to be 
feared, loved, nor revered, neither deprecated nor 
implored. He can never give us any sign of his 
sympathy, if he have any ; and w^hether we adore 
him or deny him, and spit upon his name, it will be 



60 CHRISTIAN' CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

all the same to us, provided we observe such of 
nature's laws as can be made to work for our inter- 
est. As our conscious individuality began with our 
organization, with that it will end, unless, in accord- 
ance with the Pythagorean and Hindoo view of the 
doctrine of evolution, we may have a number of 
metempsychoses ; but even then we shall inevitably 
sink at last into the silent and unconscious nirvana. 
Here the fruit of our life also ends, so far as it con- 
cerns ourselves. There is no proper scope for the 
operation of moral law, because, if the criminal can 
stave off the penalty of his crimes till death, he 
escapes entirely. If he is fortunate in his circum- 
stances, hard of heart and conscience, he can, 
through a long career of cruelty, enjoy a degree of 
sensual and malignant and triumphant pleasure, and 
then pass away without a pang, and even while in 
the enjoyment of a fiendish gratification over the 
misery of some fresh victim of his power and malice. 
But this is right according to the theory, for this 
favored incarnate fiend is not to blame. He has 
acted only from absolute necessity, according to his 
nature and circumstances, which is true of all other 
sentient beings, and there is no special merit or de- 
merit belonging to one man above another, or to men 
above the beasts and creeping things ; and, there- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 61 

fore, it is yery proper that they meet only the good 
or the evil that comes to them here naturally and 
necessarily. Wliatever is good and strong and sub- 
lime in character that now comes from the considera- 
tion of an immortal existence, and from moral laws 
which have an unending sweep in their operation 
and influence — all this on this scheme is lost, nay, ex- 
cept in a very modified meaning, the very conception 
of moral obligation passes away, and nothing re- 
mains but a conscious motion toward pleasure and 
away from pain, just as the metal or other object 
turns to or from the positive or negative pole of the 
magnet. 

The Theism of the Bible presents us with a Per- 
sonahty of infinite perfection, distinct from the 
universe, its Creator and upholder, who sees the 
end from the beginning, and purposes and secures 
certain processes or laws, and certain results of all 
action ; who has created man with a peculiar ^ower 
of conception and vohtion, which is called moral, in 
virtue of which he can free himself for a season, 
and to a certain extent, from nature's inexorable 
chain of sequences, and thus exercise the subhme 
prerogative of choosing his own moral destiny. It 
afl&rms that man has once chosen wrong and de- 
stroyed himself, but that God pities him as a father 



62 CEBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

pities his children, that he gives ns his Spirit to in- 
cite us to all holy endeavors, and empower us to 
live a pure and holy life on earth ; that he pities our 
weakness, forgives our sins and failings if we are 
penitent, sympathizes with us in our trials, is gra- 
ciously accessible to our prayers ; that while we are 
here aU things shall, in some way or other, conspire 
for our welfare ; that if some of these things are 
very painful and afflictive now, they shall, if rightly 
borne, be productive of a proportionate f ehcity here- 
after ; that every vohtion and exercise of goodness, 
whether it bears immediate fruit or not, or is recog- 
nized or not in this world, shall work in its subject 
forevermore a moral power and elevation, and hap- 
piness corresponding with its relative moral worth ; 
that to the wicked the same moral law operates in 
an inverse direction and result, and that they can 
escape the eternal consequence only by repentance 
and reformation, henceforth Kving as his servants. 

I think no one who compares these two theories 
honestly, will be at a loss to determine which is the 
nobler, and which, as an ideal, is to be preferred. 
The difference between the two I cannot character- 
ize, because it is too great, and the advantage in 
every particular is on the side of our Theism. In 
such a comparison Evolution, of whatever stripe of 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. G3 

pure naturalism, loses all lustre, and becomes not 
only insignificant, but contemptible, while Theism 
appears adorned with the glory of heaven and the 
subUmity of eternity. 



64 CHRISTIAN CONCEFTION A2W EXFEBIENGE. 



CHAPTEE IX, 

JESUS. 

The incomparable superiority of the Theistic con- 
ception is exemplified in Jesus. In Jesus of Naza- 
reth we have a character which is the alleged embod 
iment of Theism ; and this character towers so far 
above all others in the whole range of history, as to 
exclude all question or comparison. In the amaz- 
ing breadth of his views and sympathies, in the ele- 
vation and purity of his moral conceptions, in his 
tenderness and pity for human weakness or woes, in 
the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of his 
moral purposes and ultimate ends, in his limitless, 
pure and unconventional benevolence, in his snbHme 
hopefulness, amounting to absolute assurance of the 
ultimate triumph of the good and the eternal bless- 
edness and glory of the righteous, and in the grand 
incitement which he supplies and infuses into his 
disciples to live and labor in view of this, and in th(? 
belief that each can be of some real service in pn 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 65 

inoting it — in all these, and many more points of 
equally great significance, lie is a most marvelous 
moral phenomenon. All else that is great and won- 
derful in human personahtj'^, dwindles into insignifi- 
cance in comparison with him. While I Avrite I feel 
most profoundly the relative insignificance and im- 
potence of this attempt in a few words to depict 
him. His character, as given in brief simple narra- 
tives by four unlearned and bigoted Jews nearly two 
thousand years ago, is far above all power of de- 
scription that I possess. It is immeasurably above 
me. I fall in homage before it, and all the world 
has done the same. Jesus is the king of men, and 
commands the most royal homage of all hearts. 
From peasant to prince and from clown to philoso- 
pher, all ranks and all lands haste to make wiUing 
obeisance before him. 

In this brief description I have conceived him 
only as a man, and have made no reference to the 
claim which his disciples have made for him as a 
miracle worker, and as the sacrificial Lamb which 
takes away the sin of the world. 

But in estimating the greatness of his character, 
justice demands that we take note of the kind and 
degree of influence which he has wielded and still 
wields increasingly in the world. This influence is 



66 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION' AND EXPERIENCE. 

distinctively moral, and is therefore absolutely free 
and unforced, and it continually increases as both 
cause and consequence of the growth of freedom and 
intelligence and moral conception among men ; and 
every individual man pays to Jesus a higher moral 
homage in proportion as his own power of moral 
conception rises. 

One of the most sublime and striking characteris- 
tic features in the life of Jesus is the qtiiet and per- 
fectly unostentatious assumption and ineffaceable 
impression which he makes of being at once immea- 
surably above all the world and its forces of every 
grade and form, while yet subject to certain of its 
laws, and in full and keen sympathy with every heart- 
pulse of all its throbbing millions; so that every 
tried and troubled soul, not impenitent or morally 
rebellious, when contemplating his teachings and 
character, feels in him the comfort of a wondrous 
and exquisite friendship. Explain it as we may, such 
is the fact. There is nothing like this, nothing 
to approximate it or compare with it in the 
whole world. It utterly eclipses all other ex- 
amples of exalted personal moral influence. The 
story of his life has acted for good like a celestial 
magic on the moral history of uncounted myriads ; 
and the purest, the subhmest and the most beauti- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 67 

fill characters that have shone on the page of history 
from his day to this, have in grateful homage as- 
cribed theu' distinguishing excellencies to the in- 
fluence of the hfe and death of Jesus. As depicted 
by two philosophers, one of them of unequalled elo- 
quence and philosophical genius, Socrates appears 
truly great ; but to compare his moral glory and in- 
fluence with those of Jesus as depicted by four un- 
cultured Jews, and reflected from the entire plane of 
European history since his death, is simply and in- 
effably puerile. Jesus stands alone, and of the peo- 
ple there are none with him. 

It may be said that his influence is very largely 
owing to an impression which has so widely prevail- 
ed, and which still prevails, that he possesses a 
divine dignity and power, so that the minds -of such 
believers are necessarily prostrated before him, and 
they imagine that he sees them now, and now has a 
sympathy mth them, and communicates to them cer- 
tain benefits, the behef of which inspires and ani- 
mates, and so strengthens and helps them. This is 
no doubt true ; but all its logical force is in favor of 
Theism, not against it, as we shall soon see. I shall 
make no inquiry into the origin of this prevalent im- 
pression with a design to infer that this impression 
must have a foundation in fact. I will simply call 



68 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

attention to the fact of this impression and its effect 
as a phenomenon which demands an explanation, 
and necessitates certain logical conclusions. 

The ver J least and lowest of these conclusions is 
that this impression must have a cause in the charac- 
ter to which such an awful exaltation is ascribed. It 
cannot have any other origin, because there is noth- 
ing significant in his outward condition except 
such as was imparted to it by his character, I do 
not mean to imtimate that this is any proof of his di- 
vinity, but only of his unparalleled greatness and moral 
majesty, a greatness so vast and a moral glory so 
elevated that many of the greatest minds and finest 
natures in the world have united to worship him as 
the supreme God, " the Maker and Upholder of all ; " 
so that He is literally the perfect personation of 
Theism. 

Further, while we make no affirmation concerning 
the truth or the error of this conception and behef, 
yet there is here forced on our attention the patent 
historic fact that a genuine faith in Jesus as the 
Friend of the needy, either as the absolute God or 
as the highest personation of God, has the most 
beneficent, the most purifying and the most elevat- 
ing influence on the minds and hearts of men, that 
it soothes their sorrows, dispels dispondency, and in- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCK 69 

spires and develops in a wonderful degree tlie be- 
liever's moral energies. By this faith myriads have 
been redeemed and absolutely transformed ; and 
alike in life and death it has suffused them with a 
peace which passeth all understanding, on the basis 
of naturahsm. 

What, then, are the essential and central elements 
of Christ's moral greatness ? What is it that consti- 
tutes the peculiar charm, the moral beauty and power 
of his life and teaching? We answer that it was his 
loving personality, and his representations of the lov- 
ing personahty of God as the Father. We might 
illustrate this at length from the Gospel narratives ; 
but it is so clear as to be unquestionable by any mind 
not utterly impervious to just conceptions. Besides, 
the Gospels are so fall of exemphfications, that we 
are embarrassed in an attempt to make a selection. 
The first that occurs to the mind is as good as anj , 
like a handful of wheat from the bin. There is for 
the penitent the story of the prodigal and his father. 
As an encouragement to prayer, there is the story 
of parents beiug evil, yet knowing how to give good 
gifts to their children, as a faint type of the great 
Father's disposition toward all who look to Him for 
a blessing. For the satisfaction of the personal 
sympathies and yearnings of his disciples about to 



70 GHBISTIAN CONGEFTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

be bereaved of his yisible presence, he tells them 
that he will be absent from them only for a Httle 
while, that he will spend the interval in preparing a 
place where he may receive them to himseK and be 
with them forever ; and that in the meanwhile he 
will be their invisible companion and guest, that 
with the Holy Spirit and the Father he will take up 
his abode in their spirits. 

If we take away from the life and teachings of 
Jesus, all affirmation and all faith concerning a 
personal Deity, and our personal immortality, and 
the immortality of all moral issues, there would be 
nothing left of him. He would become weak like 
other men, the poorest of them — ^like M. Comte, for 
instance. It seems a profanation to introduce such 
a name in this connection. But the profanation is 
not in me, but in M. Comte himself. He is the mod- 
em demiurge of naturaUsm, who first essayed to dis- 
pense with all supernaturalism, after a scientific 
method ; and he has thus also put himself and his 
life forward as an exemplification of the operation of 
naturalism. He claims to fulfil his own ideal, the 
naturalistic ideal, as he conceives and expounds it, 
which allowed him to become the voluntary victim 
of a passionate attachment to another man's wife, and 
thus renew the driveling ^' Sorrows of Werther." 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 71 

John Stuart Mill, his greatest English admirer and 
disciple, in the same way also took to another man's 
wife, though he kindly refrained from marrying her 
while her first husband lived ; and, with the widow's 
hand in his, he shed a civil tear into the grave of 
the departed. 

But we have left Jesus to look at Comte and Mill 
as two great apostles of naturalism, and in so doing, 
and as necessary to it, we have been going down, down 
a far steeper descent than that of Avernus, through 
rocky rifts to sunless depths, where all the noblest 
elements of our natui-e are congealed in eternal frost.' 
There we leave them, and return to Jesus and his 
conception, and exhibition of the personal and su- 
pernatural God and Father. Here the soul feels 
afresh the quickening of spiritual light and warmth, 
in the loving personality of Jesus as the brightness 
of the Father's glory and the express image of His 
Person, the infinite Personality with infinite sym- 
pathies, which embrace us all and all that concerns 
us. It is the supreme domination of this principle 
and its perfect action and development in his life 
which give to him his characteristic beauty and dig- 
nity, and endow him with all his amazing power over 
mankind. From this all other elements of his power 
are derived, and iliis is pre-supposed in all the pecu- 



72 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE 

liar doctrines of evangelical Christianity, so that these, 
for our present purpose, may be left out of account. 

Now, for the necessary conclusion from all this. If 
this central principle of the life and labors of Christ, 
the characteristic feature of his moral beauty and 
greatness, and the primal source of his marvelous and 
ever-growing power among men, incomparably the 
noblest and most beneficent that the world has ever 
known, if this is erroneous, then, error is universally 
crowned with supremest honor as the mightiest and 
most charming of all moral agencies. This discrowns 
truth, veracity, and all philosophy. Therefore, if 
there is any Truth, and if science and philosophy are 
possible, and if they are coincident with the highest 
moral forces and results, they are coincident with 
Theism, and Theism is philosophical and true. The 
True is the best, and the best is the True. 

It would be worse than trifling to try to evade the 
force of this reasoning by raising the question 
whether error may not sometimes be a benefit. 
Such a question involves not only truth, but truth- 
fulness, not only verity, but veracity. Our estimate 
of truth and truthfulness will always keep pace 
with each other, as they always have done. Who- 
ever thinks that error will in any case be better 
than truth, will in that case feel justified in creat- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 73 

ing or fostering error consciously, and therefore in 
lying. This has been exemplied by priestcraft, 
and statecraft in all ages and countries ; and it 
has been the fertile source of some of the most dia- 
bolical atrocities which stain the pages of history. 

No doubt there are circumstances in which error 
and even deception may operate beneficially. A 
person who has injured his health and disordered his 
mind, till he sees fearful visions, and thinks them 
bad spirits prognosticating his speedy and eternal 
perdition, may be so excited and aroused to serious 
reflection and resolve, as to lead thenceforth an en- 
tirely new life of a truly good and noble type. But 
even this is not so good and noble as the same 
course of action from more just and wise grounds, 
from broad and sound views of the intrinsic worth, 
dignity, and beauty of virtue. The reformation of 
lifa originating in a low motive, is less exalted in 
character at first, than if it had a nobler origin ; and 
the character will never entirely make up for this 
loss, will never be what it would if this nobler force 
had earher commenced its operation. Besides, there 
will be a breach in the continuity of the good moral 
effect of the illusion when the illusion is dissipated, 
a breach which is not necessary when truth is the 
operating influence. Had he conceived his visions, 



74 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENGR 

as they were, to be the psychological effects of his 
life, and showing the operation of necessary law, and 
thus foreshadowing immortal and eternal con- 
sequences; this, if fully conceived and believed^ 
would have been far more terrible than his own in- 
terpretation, and more sure and powerful as a motive 
to lead a better life ; and it is certain that those who 
thus discern the operation of law, are generally and 
steadily more obedient to law, than those who do 
not. 

While it may sometimes be beneficial to divert 
some dangerous hallucination of the lunatic, by gen- 
erating another of less serious tendency ; and while 
there are occasional developments of good among the 
sane, from erroneous impressions, these are only 
subordinate and incidental, and contrary to the gen- 
eral law and tenor of human things ; else converse- 
ly, error and falsehood are better in their operation 
than truth and knowledge, and are therefore more to 
be desired. This, we repeat, contradicts all thought, 
all science and all philosophy ; these affirm that the 
highest good is, or is coincident with, the supreme 
truth. Now, it is not by accident that Christian 
Theism achieves its moral results, but by intrinsic 
nature and necessity, and according to a fundamental 
moral law, which is uniform, and hence to a large 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 75 

degree predictable in its operations. As Theism is 
proved to be the highest good, it must be admitted 
to be the truth, unless we abandon all accepted 
principles, and admit that error and falsehood are 
the highest good ; and even then we should have to 
retain Theism as this good. 



76 CERIBTIAN CONCEPTION AM) EXFEBIENCK 



CHAPTEE X. 

FAITH AND W O K K S. 

What an ideal is to a thinker or an artist a creed 
is to a believer ; and if the ideal is also a creed, or 
the creed an ideal, the influence of the ideal becomes 
exalted. Hence the power of Theism as a creed; 
and the obhgation to make it a creed as well as an 
ideal. The moral heroes of church history would 
have been weak as other men without their faith. 
We always attribute their life in the main to then* 
real faith. 

This is a principle which is universally accepted 
and acted on. But our subject brings it up in a new 
connection, which generates a new conception and 
influence. 

A man must act either from the strongest present 
proclivity, as all mere animals do ; or, as a rational 
being, he must act from a rational purpose in view of 
a rational end. This end should be the highest and 
best which is conceived and believed to be attaina- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 77 

ble. This can never be transcended. We may fall 
below it. We may refuse to pursue it because, 
tliougli we think it is attainable, it requires sacrifices 
which we are not willing to make. Many prefer the 
inferior pleasru'e, because it comes quicker and 
easier, to the ulterior and higher, because these de- 
mand a larger tribute than they are willing to pay. 
Where all faith and hope of any ulterior and higher 
good are utterly removed or destroyed, there can be 
no effort for the attainment of that higher good. 
The stronger prochvity will absolutely rule. x4lc- 
cording to the ruling passion, men and their lives 
will differ ; bnt the energies and aims of all will be 
restricted within the circle of their faith and hopes. 
If that circle is bounded by our mortal life, the 
highest good attainable in this life must be the 
highest end that any one can ever be supposed to 
pursue. With a very few this will be intellectual 
achievement and distinction. If any are bom with 
a predominant genius for goodness, its cultivation 
and enjoyment may be the highest end for them ; 
that is, if they do not fimd it so obstructed as to 
bring different elements into play with more ease 
and pleasure. For the mass of mankind there can 
be no higher end than animal pleasures, with a 
shght infusion here and there of something like in- 



78 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

telligence ; and all such "will naturally snatch at 
pleasures as they offer, without distmction, except as 
yery obvious and dreaded consequences of a material 
nature may prevent. 

This nullifies all moral argumentation, for there is 
no principle on which we can argue. If we attempt 
to elevate the conceptions and aspirations of any, 
and so induce them to strive after a higher order of 
enjoyment, they may conclusively reply that the 
effort to rise by foregoing pleasures they can enjoy 
while cultivating laboriously and painfully a capacity 
for other pleasures, will not pay, and that it is much 
better, because more agreeable, to enjoy pleasures 
which are really at their command than to reject 
them for what they may never be able to compass 
except in a very small and unsatisfactory degree, 
and for a very short time. Besides, if they are sup- 
posed to be what they are in virtue of the evolution 
of natural forces only, of course, all argumentation 
on the score of duty to induce them to transcend 
these natural forces is absurd. They will necessarily 
become just what these evolving forces, including 
the argument or exhortation, shall make them. 

All moral influences and forces which have theii' 
root in the behef of an immortal existence, and of 
the immortal consequences of all our action here, 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 79 

will be anniliilated. Be these influences great or 
small with the believer, they are absolutely nothing 
with the unbeKever ; for they are forceful only as 
principles or ideals beheved, so that whosoever is in 
any degree influenced by them is so far a behever. 

Now, suppose that all faith in our personal im- 
mortality and eternal judgment, as Paul phrases 
the immortal fruitage of our life on earth, were ut- 
terly swept from the mind of man, would it be as 
well for man in this world? would it promote peace, 
progress, and mutual confidence, and beget the loft- 
iest forms of human life and character ? If it would 
not, then Theism is true, or else here, also, error 
and falsehood are better than truth. 

If Theism is false yet beneficial, then science and 
philosophy are nullified and injurious. If it is alike 
false and injurious in this life, the world would be 
better if we were all atheists. Which of these is 
the truth ? Is either of them true ? 

I do not doubt but that the world would be better 
if some forms of religion were either annihilated or 
replaced by other forms. That is not the question. 
That certain forms or pretences of religion are 
absurd or injurious, is not an argument against 
Theism. The question is, whether our welfare in 
this life would be promoted in a higher degree by 



80 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

the imi versa! belief that our personal existence ceases 
at death, which materiahsm affirms and evolution 
cannot deny, or by the beUef that we shall live for- 
ever, and that, under the superintendence of a super- 
natural and all powerful, wise and just Being, we shall 
reap the consequences of our life here on earth ? There 
are minds who will reply in favor of the former. But 
they are fevf, and they are never found in the front 
rank of men. The noblest and most enlightened 
minds have uniformly taken the opposite side ; and 
these form the jury to which all intelligence must 
make its appeal. 

Eulers, legislators, poets, historians, philosophers, 
priests, economists and moralists, with a singular 
unanimity have affirmed in all ages that the belief in 
a personal God and a future existence, and judg- 
ment according to the deeds of this life, is necessary 
to the stability and welfare of society. It is true 
that this has been often made an engine of priest- 
craft and of state-craft. But this is only an instance 
of the perversion of what in its normal operation is 
acknowledged to be a good thing ; and faith in its 
intrinsic worth is necessary before such perversion 
is possible. 

Still, the past judgment even of the best and 
ablest men may have been erroneous, and it is, of 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, gl 

course, possible that "modern tliouglit," is wiser 
than the ancients. But the human mind was per- 
haps never more religious than it is to-day ; and in- 
deed very few of the most gifted and cultured minds 
are avowedly in favor of atheism ; nor is Christian 
Theism waning. 

Further, take another look at the elemental forces 
of the two theories. 

One is absolutely devoid of all moral force, the 
other possesses the highest conceivable of all moral 
forces. One says : " Let us eat and drink, for to- 
morrow we die.*^' The other says : " Let us watch 
and work and wait and pray, for this life is the seed- 
time, and to all eternity we shall gather the har- 
vest." One says: "Snatch the pleasures which 
come the easiest." The other says : " Seek and 
pursue with all energy and constancy, and at all sac- 
rifice, the purer and nobler and more enduring 
pleasures, because we shall have time to mature 
and enjoy them." One says : " Do good to others so 
far as it may be good for your earthly interests." 
The other says : " Do good to them so far as it will 
minister to their and your moral and spiritual and 
eternal welfare." One is of the earth, earthy. The 
other is the Lord from heaven, a quickening spirit. 
If the latter is not true, it ought to be true ; and all 



82 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

the best minds of the world must endeavor to make 
it appear true ; and so they will be justified and en- 
nobled in advocating error and falsehood, if this is 
not true. Thus, I repeat, science and philosophy 
and veracity itself are nullified, unless this is true, 
therefore it is true. 

N0W5 as the Theistic conception is so clearly, and 
vastly superior to all other theories of the universe, 
it has the right of uncompeting precedence of all. 
If this right is not conceded, it must be owing either 
to perversity or ignorance and misapprehension. It 
may be rejected for some other theory because its 
excellence is not discerned. But, then, this lack of 
discernment may be a misfortune only, or a fault, 
and the effect of "an overwhelming bias" against it. 

Christian Theism presents us with the conception 
of a Being of absolute and infinite perfection, who, 
as the Author of all, will secure the highest possible 
good from all, and to all — who will aid and comfort 
and give perfect and everlasting success to all his 
faithful servants, and will be their protector and 
friend now and forever ; and who, if they stumble 
and fall, will help and protect them again, and will 
pity and forgive them, when they turn to him afresh. 
On the other hand, naturaUsm has nothing whatever 
of all this. There is nothing but an unsympathetic, 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. §3 

inexorable, uniform force. It has neither sympathy 
for the weak, nor pity for the unfortunate, nor mercy 
for the penitent, nor any great assurance for the 
good and pious, and it is utterly devoid of all power 
to produce the high and subhme feeling of the ever- 
lasting and triumphant superiority and glory of the 
good, so as to assure moral integrity that it is a king 
in its own right, and shall reign for ever and ever. 
Yet this millstone evolution would hang around our 
neck with the calm and assured aspect of pretended 
science and philosophy, telling us that it is better 
and nobler than the celestial halo of the eternal 
glory around our temples. 

The essential character and the moral and rehg- 
ious imphcations of this theory are strikingly indi- 
cated in the following terrible sentence from one of 
its advocates, in the name of secularism : ^' Science 
has shown us that we are under the dominion of 
general laws, and that there is no special Provi- 
dence. Nature acts with fearful uniformity — stem 
as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death, too 
vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too 
inexorable to propitiate ; it has no ear for prayer, 
no heart for sympathy, no arm to save." 



84 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEEIENOK 



CHAPTEE XL 

EEWAED OF FIDELITY. 

Let us not forget tliat in thus claiming a practical 
allegiance for our ideals, I do not claim that they 
are absolutely true. I only claim that they are our 
highest rule and ground of action. But this does 
not prove them to be absolute truths, for then differ- 
ent ideals and opposing ideals would all be true. A 
man is bound to adopt and obey the highest ideal of 
existence and action that he is able to attain. Pos- 
sibly, it may not be precisely true. It may be far 
beneath the truth, as it generally is It can never 
be above the truth, except in some particular and 
contingent mode. We can never transcend the in- 
finite, and the infinitesimal man can never tran- 
scend the indefinitely gTeat, the totahty of the uni- 
verse. We may, therefore, safely assume -always 
that the totality of truth is at least as high as our 
ideal of the universe. 

This, also, I say with assurance, that, if our 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. §5 

ideal is not objectively real, we shall wish it to 
be so, and we shall be dissatisfied with what- 
ever is beneath it and in conflict with it ; and, 
fui^ther, whether it be known or not as objec- 
tively real, we shall endeavor to build ourselves up 
in accordance with its requirements. This rever- 
ence for it, and this wish that it may be real, will 
tend to beget a hope, if not an assurance, that fur- 
ther Hght will prove its objective reality. At the 
very lowest, we shall reflect that it is possible, and 
may, therefore, be true. 

This is a sufficient ground for action in accord- 
ance with it. We must act, and, as all action im- 
phes some supposition or hypotheses of methods 
and results, we are bound to act upon the best hy- 
pothesis. Whether the Christian hypothesis be 
true or not, it is the noblest in conception, and is 
practically the best, as it must be, and as we know 
from history and observation, it is. 

It very often happens, in physical science, that, 
by proceeding in conformity with a hypothesis, we 
are enabled to verify or disprove it. It is in this 
way that science has gained her most signal vic- 
tories, and it is in this way that nearly all investiga- 
tion is conducted, and must be. Now, suppose we 
consider the Christian ideal as a hypothesis to be 



86 CHRISTIAN CONGEFTION AND EXFEBIENCK 

verified by experience, or to be thus disproved. 
This supposition is a part of that hypothesis or 
ideal, which calls us to " taste and see." It declares 
that, if we act upon it, we shall verify it by expe- 
rience. How, then, can any man justify himseK in 
refusing to test it thoroughly ? The process or 
method of testing it is not at all difficult, except as 
there is a difficulty in our own disposition. 

Urging this point upon my skeptical friend, he 
repUed, "How can I thus test it? According to 
your supreme authority, ^ He that cometli unto God 
rrnist believe that He is and that He is the reioarder of 
them that diligently seek Him,'' I do not beheve that 
there is such a Being, though I do not deny that 
there may be, and in this doubtful state how can I 
go to Him ? You tell me to cast myself in faith 
upon Christ as a divine Saviour, when I have no 
faith in him except as a man, hke myself, though no 
doubt a great deal better man than I am. How am 
I to do it r 

I then told the story of the skeptic in distress, 
who cried out, '' O Grod, if a God there be, have pity 
upon me and save me !" I said, " You can at least do 
that. You are conscious of being very weak and 
blind, a self-conscious and yet helpless atom amid a 
universe of forces. What is your destiny you can- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEUIENCE, 87 

not foresee, unless it be to dance on for a while in 
conscious aimlessness, and then to dance on forever 
T\ith the consciousness forever ended. On the other 
hand, you know not but that Christianity is essen- 
tially true, that a conscious destiny of everlasting 
glory or despair is before you, and that it will be 
one or the other, according as you accept the Gospel. 
Hence, as you are bound to act in accordance with 
your most serious needs and the highest possibili- 
ties of things, you are bound in consistency to do no 
less than the skeptic I have mentioned. You ought 
to pray that if this ideal God of the Christian ex- 
ists, He will lead you on into knowledge and Ught 
and faith ; and this prayer must be a hfe-long 
prayer, unless it is changed and elevated by a con- 
scious answer. You are bound also in every possi- 
ble way to render a practical homage to this Ideal, 
and so to give to Christianity in its purest and 
noblest form as known to you your countenance and 
support to the utmost of your power, and that con- 
stantly and perpetually." 

Skepticism may here plead, as it did in the person 
of my friend, that this ideal is perhaps not the high- 
est, that an unconscious power may be ineffably 
above the conscious. But he was compelled to con- 
fess that this is not only ineffable, but inconceivable, 



88 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENGE. 

because we can conceive nothing except what cor- 
responds to some mode of experience or conscious- 
ness. This, therefore, cannot be constructed into 
an ideal, because it is not an idea. 

The supposition, therefore, besides being only a 
supposition, is a supposition of the inconceivable, 
and so it is no real supposition. His proposition is 
utterly empty. Here I confidently appealed from 
all such substitute and pretence of thought to the 
sohd judgment of all thinking men, whether this is 
not absurd, a mere ghost of an idea, and whether the 
Christian Ideal is not incomparably more noble and 
inspiring to all good thought and feehng and action. 
Divesting himself of the influence of his favorite au- 
thors, and looking at the question for himself afresh, 
he saw and confessed that this is true. This broke 
down the chief moral barrier in the way of his con- 
version, for it revealed a practical duty as flowing im- 
mediately from it. 

Following up my argument with exhortation, I 
said, " Act consistently, thoroughly and steadily on 
your own knowledge and highest conceptions, and I 
have no hesitation in predicting the result. If there 
is such a God, as I believe and know there is, He 
cannot disregard the prayer of such a suppliant. 
He will not break the bruised reed nor quench the 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEHIENCE. 89 

smoking flax. The cry of the needy, the weak, the 
poor in spirit, and the confessedly bhnd, are particu- 
larly dear to Him, and in due time He will rend the 
heavens, if necessary, to come to their relief. This 
must be so if Christianity is true. Such a worship- 
per must sooner or later, suddenly or gradually, 
enter into the 'joy of the Lord, which is your 
strength.' " 

The Scriptures are also very clear in testifying to 
this principle. They tell us, even in the Old Testa- 
ment, that " ye shall know, if ye follow on to know 
the Lord." Eehgious knowledge, faith, experience 
and power, follow a law of growth, and that law is 
fidehty in the use of knowledge and power abeady 
had. So Christ said, " If any man will do His will, 
he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." 
Let a man be thoroughly honest, and act up to the 
light he has respecting his need and his duty, and 
he will not remain in darkness, but shall know the 
truth of the doctrines of Christ. 

This accords with all the laws of our nature. We 
always grow in the Une of our work ; and the wish 
is very natui'ally and generally the father of our 
thought. Habit always works to the same end. 
Action, which is at first constrained and disagree- 
able, becomes by repetition easy and pleasant, and 



90 CHRISTIAN' CONCEPTION ANB EXPERIENCE, 

even necessary to our comfort. Ideas toward which 
and in sympathy with which we work become in- 
terwoven into the moral tissues of our nature as Uv- 
ing and practical faiths. Indeed, aU moral and prac- 
tical faith is the product of culture. Untried, it is 
usually timid and somewhat doubtful, but by every 
successful experiment it is confirmed and strengthen- 
ed. Obedience, according to our conception and 
knowledge, is the culturer of faith. 

My friend was not slow to notice an apparent 
philosophical objection to this, that it makes faith 
the product, not of inteUigence, but of vohtion, of 
sympathy and taste, and of mere iteration. This is 
only partially true, and in its soul and essence it is 
wholly false. It is true that faith comes, or is foster- 
ed and developed by these methods; but these 
methods are pursued in obedience to our highest in- 
telligence, and so they have its sanction and author- 
ity ; and intelligence is entitled to claim as its own 
and to honor with its own dignity whatever comes of 
conformity with its requirements. 

Obedience to this conception was the chief 
cause of the ultimate conversion of my friend. 
He had many pious friends whom he loved and es- 
teemed, and he was never blind to the exalted ideal . 
of Christianity, nor to the moral worth of many of 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 91 

its adherents, nor to the grand elation which 
the hope that is "big with immortahty " inspires 
in them; and while he affected to look down 
upon them he really looked up to them, would 
occasionally go with them to church and con- 
tribute to the cause which is so dear to them. He 
had an ideal which, with even his irregular following 
of it, begot a faith which was deeper and stronger 
than he was aware, while his skepticism was thus 
rendered comparatively superficial, and it finally 
gave way altogether, replaced by Christian faith and 
peace. 

It is just here that intellectual consistency and 
moral honesty are tested. Refusing this homage to 
Christianity, they are weighed in the balance and 
found wanting. The oracle of their own philoso- 
phy pronounces against them. On the other hand, 
acting with thorough consistency on their own 
knowledge and principles, they will, I believe, come 
to the knowledge of the Truth, as my friend has hap- 
pily experienced. 



92 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 



CHAPTER XII. 



AN EXAMPLE. 



In order to emphasize the importance of obeying 
our highest conceptions as our highest authority, I 
will here relate the experience of one whom I well 
knew, a gentleman somewhat tnown to the pubhc as 
an author, but whom I may not here name except 

as Mr. H . "We were quite intimate at the 

most critical period of our Uves, when our principles 
were forming and fighting their way through hosts 
of skeptical obstructions. 

His first difficulty was on the question of the free- 
dom and necessity of the human will. He had read 
Jonathan Edwards on the Will, and was conquered 
by his subtle argumentation. In connection with 
this he read extensively the writings of Calvanistic 
divines, whose views he embraced with ardor. For 
a few years this seemed to give elevation and 
strength to his cha; icter. 



CBSTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 93 

But bom, apparently, to test his principles at all 
points, Mr. H. pushed these to their utmost conse- 
quences, as others have done, and deduced from 
them a fatahsm which destroys all personal moral 
quahty and responsibility. Yet this conclusion was 
in \dtal conflict with his moral consciousness. 
Neither of these opposing internal forces could sur- 
render, and for two or three years he lay helpless 
between them, hke a helmless ship in the trough of 
the sea. 

Mr. H. recovered from his supineness and the 
agonies of perpetual and ineffectual conflict, by a 
train of reflection which resulted in a determination 
to follow in practice and in the tenor of his thinking 
his moral and intellectual ideal. He reflected that 
the metaphysical theory of necessity in its present 
exposition certainly conflicts Avith the moral concep- 
tion, that therefore one or the other must be false, or 
that another explanation and some modification of 
one or both, are necessary, in order to introduce 
harmony. 

But which of these can possibly be subject to the 
required modification ? This must be determined 
by an examination of their respective authority and 
influence and logical consequences. He observed 
that the doctrine of necessity is supposed to have 



94 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

the support of observation. This is its only support 
in the last analysis. It is supposed that there is no 
deviation from the law of uniformity, that as the an- 
tecedents are the consequence must be, and that the 
former are ahke the cause and the explanation of 
the latter. Now, it is barely possible that this is not 
a full or perfect account of the facts of the case. 

What is the influence and the logical consequence 
of this theory ? Practically, it operates in con- 
trary directions. To the hopeful, energetic and am- 
bitious, to many of the elect, or who think thus of 
themselves, it operates as an inspiration, as it did 
to Wallenstein and Bonaparte, Cromwell and the 
Puritans. But as soon as the tide turns, it operates 
disastrously, paralysing all the faculties. Now, in 
the battle of hfe the omens are not usually of the 
most encouraging kind, and these, combined with 
conscious inner inaptitudes, tend to discourage effort 
and enterprise, wherever there is any chance for a 
choice in the direction of inaction. We see this 
strikingly exemplified to-day in the Mohammedan 
and Budhistic countries. 

In spite of all arguments to the contrary, the 
theory of necessity logically and practically operates 
against a conviction of responsibility for failures, 
and it especially paralyses the spirit of enterprises 



CEBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 95 

which seek the world's moral and spiritual good. In 
the face of difficulty and'from indisposition it says, " I 
would do so and so if I were differently circum- 
stanced and constituted, as it would then be neces- 
sary, while now it is impossible. It is true that the 
means are necessary to the end, and if God has or- 
dained both, they will both come ; and if they do 
not come I cannot help it.'* So far as it is really be- 
lieved by the indisposed or the evil disposed, it is 
logically a perfect protection to them against moral 
self-accusation, because they never fail to argue 
that they are only the necessary products of their 
antecedents, over which they had no control. Such 
is the practical influence and the logical con- 
sequence of necessitarianism. It sets before us 
no object and incites to no end, represses the 
feeling of obhgation, and all the energies which 
come of that feeling developed and guided and in- 
cited to a high degree of power. It precludes all 
ideals and conscientious incitements toward their 
realization. 

On the other hand, Mr. H. had a clear conception 
of a Personality of infinite perfection ; of an ideal 
moral perfection for man, to which he is invited by 
God, and for the attainment of which God pledges 
all needful aids of his Spirit and Providence ; that 



96 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

man has a supernatural power to accept or reject 
this ideal as his end, and to secure and improve 
these means for its attainment, and that he may re- 
ject them ; and that this constitutes his moral agency 
and responsibility. 

He had at least as good a ground for this as he 
had for the doctrine of necessitarianism, observation 
of his own consciousness. Here, in the depths of 
consciousness, he felt confronted with the fact of vo- 
litional Uberty, of moral conception, and consequent 
responsibihty. The approval of his conscience, on 
acting in comphance with this ideal, and the self-in- 
flicted pain from all failures, v/ere additional con- 
firmations of the truth and value of this great ideal. 

This grand conception was with him a hving reaUty 
and power. It was the one star which shone steadi- 
ly upon him through the storm. Its charm and its 
attraction never forsook him. Though partially 
unattained, and unenjoyed a pain, it was yet a joy 
forever. It was the inspiration to all good, the chief 
solace in sorrow and conscious failures and ineffec- 
tiveness, and presented the brightest hope for the 
world. 

Now, should he abandon this and give himself 
over to an irresponsible fatalism, or hold to this, to 
the exclusion of that ; or should he hold to both ? 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 97 

The last he would have done, but he could not com- 
bme them. He therefore determmed at all events 
to hold to the idea of freedom and moral responsi- 
bility, and to consider necessitarianism as a theory 
which has some strong supports, but as being at 
present incapable of assimilation by the highest con- 
ceptions of our life and possible destiny. Necessi- 
tarianism was therefore made subordinate, and held 
in abeyance, awaiting future exposition. Practical 
unity and energy were thus at once attained. 

Mr. H. was next assailed by philosophical skep- 
ticism, styled rationalism, and then by evolution ; 
and he treated these in much the same way as he 
had treated necessitarianism. 

He did not consider these rejected theories or 
methods as refuted, but only as not having vindi- 
cated their claim on his allegiance by presenting to 
him a nobler ideal of life and hope than that for 
which they were rejected , or rather not accepted as 
complete and final. 

By this method he acquired freedom, energy and 
hope ; and by a provisional, or rather incipient phil- 
osophy of the highest order, he was saved for 
Christ, while free to prove all things and hold that 
which is good. 



98 CHEISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCK 



CHAPTEE XIIL 

THE REDEMPTIVE ECONOMY. 

In the previous exposition of Theism, we have 
carefully excluded those elements which are pecuHar 
to the scheme of Christianity as a redemptive econ- 
omy. Some may think the Theistic conception is 
better for this exclusion ; and for their benefit it has 
been so given. To them the argument has its full 
force, and neither their good humor nor singleness 
of gaze is injured. Let them act accordingly. 

But those w^ho come thus far ought to go farther. 
Christianity detracts nothing from the glory of pure 
Theism, but gives to it a new and peculiar lustre. It 
leaves untouched all the constituent elements of 
Theism, while it adds others which are in harmony 
with them and heighten their effect. It is only as a 
scheme of salvation for sinners, as a remedy for an 
existing moral evil that Christianity proper is to be 
considered. If there is any man who does not con- 



CEBSTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 99 

sider himself as justly " numbered with the trans- 
gressors," to him there is no charm in the annuncia- 
tion of Gabriel to the Virgin, that her son should 
" be called Jesus, because he should save his people 
from their sins." It is without potency and signifi- 
cance relative to his own personal needs. But if he 
is so good and pure, he must have a pity for the sin- 
ful, and feel a deep interest in any scheme which 
promises to save them from their sins, as well as 
from their worst consequences. Let, then, this good 
man exercise his benevolent sympathy in gratefully 
and hopefully considering the claims of the New Tes- 
tament plan of salvation for sinners ; as he cannot 
doubt that there are many sinners in the world. 

The sinner needs to be induced to repent and re- 
form. He needs to know and possess the condi- 
tions and means of doing this. He needs an inspir- 
ing assurance that the fulfillment of the conditions 
in the use of the means will be availing according to 
the measure of his need. Now, the question arises: 
How is all this possible ? How can all these provi- 
sions be furnished ? How shall one who is a sinner, 
and sees the vile quality of sin, believe in the love of 
God to him, and that he can be received afresh in- 
to the heart and loving family of God? Any ap- 
proaeh to flippancy in responding to such an in- 



100 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

quiry would be very wrong, and be pregnant with al- 
most infinite harm. 

One thing is quite clear to us all, that thorough 
repentance is possible only toward love and cordial 
forgiveness and restoration. The penitent sinner 
may not hope, perhaps, much less demand, that he 
be made as much of as if he had not sinned, but he 
must hope and beUeve that no grudges shall be 
cherished in memory of the past, and that in no 
stinging and purposefully painful manner shall his 
sin be ever flaunted before him, and that it shall be 
held in as great a mental repression as is compatible 
with God's omniscience, and the creature's perfect 
memory ; or, in other words, that it shall be remem- 
bered only with tenderness, and be mentioned or re- 
ferred to only for the highest moral ends, and for 
the penitent's own highest good. 

But where shall a sinning creature get the assur- 
ance of all this ? This is a question difficult to an- 
swer, as sm necessarily brings difficulties with it of 
every kind. 

There is a difficulty arising from the moral char- 
acter of the sinner, and the mental state which his 
sin has necessarily engendered. He is consciously 
and confessedly selfish, and in a degree is morally 
blind, as sin always stupefies the finer sensibilities 



CHRISTIAN COXCEPTIOX AXD EXPERIENCE. IQl 

and blunts and benumbs the moral intuitions. How 
is he then, in his bad life, to be impressed with the 
divine love and pity and readiness to forgive with 
full and perfect ardor of cordial affection? His 
natural conception of God must be in some measure 
a reflection of himself, so that to his mind the di- 
vine image must appear clouded and marred. 
Fear, distrust and aversion will be the inevitable 
consequence. 

It will avail httle to tell such a one that God is 
good or merciful. Words are without significance 
except as they are the expression of some experi- 
ence, internal or external. But very bad men, who 
have sinned dehberately and habitually against 
clear conviction, in whom mahgnity and its associ- 
ated forms of sin have become highly developed and 
estabhshed, have but small experience, and but very 
small capacity of judging or appreciating either 
what they hear or see as expressions or exliibitions 
of pity for the guilty and the vile. All philosophical 
reflections, and even all inspired affirmations of the 
love of God will therefore often need whatever sup- 
port and illustration they can possibly receive in or- 
der to touch some hearts, and inspire them with a 
hope that pardon, and moral salvation, and fellow- 
ship with God are possible for them. 



102 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

This internal difficulty in the way of a sinner's sal- 
vation through faith in the love and mercy of God 
toward himself is sustained and fostered by obvious 
and striking facts in the economy of the divine gov- 
ernment. If our senses are regaled by beauty and 
fragrance, and bright skies and placid waters, they 
are also stung and stunned, and confounded by tem- 
pests and frosts, by floods and droughts, by famine 
and pestilence, and other innumerable and inevitable 
miseries. 

It is true that many of man's miseries are the ef- 
fect of his perversity and folly. But this truth is the 
most cutting argument against a poor sinner's hopes. 
It even seems to tear up these hopes by the roots, 
as it is the affirmation of the inflexibility of law. 
Nature is here absolutely stern and relentless. She 
is also the same to the penitent and the impenitent. 
To neither one nor the other does she ever recall 
the past. He who has lost his sight by a careless 
handling of gimpowder will not regain his sight by 
any subsequent prudence. God's expression of him- 
self in nature, therefore, presents little comfort to 
the sinner. Whatever it says of the divine good- 
ness, it speaks with equal emphasis oi the divine se- 
verity, and never of the divine mercy. Hence those 
who identify God with nature never allow of any 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 103 

mercy proper. Tliey preach without quahfication 
the inexorableness of law. They cannot do other- 
wise without flagrant self-contradiction. Nature, 
therefore, can give no unequivocal proof that God 
can thoroughly and cordially forgive and love the 
sinner, especially the heinous sinner. 

This conclusion is confirmed by observing the al- 
most universal judgment of the human conscience, 
which is generally pronounced to be the voice of 
God. It is certainly an expression of the natural 
operation of the human nature, of which God is the 
author ; and in this hght it is an expression, though 
imperfect, of the divine will, just as the external 
world, to the seeing eye, displays the eternal power 
and Godhead. The human conscience has always 
been dubious and dark on this subject ; and very 
generally it has been intensely anxious and troubled. 
Hence its universal resort to sacrifices, except in the 
case of those who beheve in him who has once of- 
fered himseK for all. 

Nor can any appeal to the elemental conceptions 
of the divine character or ideal at all avail to remove 
the distrust which a hard heart and life engender 
respecting the mercy of God. Indeed, it has always 
been difficult for either philosophers or divines to 
understand, much more to explain to gloomy, con- 



104 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

science-stricken souls, how mercy is compatible with 
tlie divine perfection as a just law-giver. Forgive- 
ness seems to belie the moral law, which is the su- 
preme outcome of the divine nature. Hence, men 
have always raised the question: If God is just, 
how can He forgive ? and philosophy has furnished 
no satisfactory answer. 

If we attempt to fall back on the general declara- 
tion that the prime element of the divine character 
is love, we are called to consider that this love com- 
prehends holiness and justice ; that it is found only 
in the Bible, and there it is found only in connection 
with sacrifice for sin. We cannot, therefore, by this 
route take the first step away from our logical diffi- 
culty, which is a practical difficulty, in our effort to 
save sinners from then- sins. They can never thor- 
oughly repeat vdthout a firm conviction that the love 
of God is directed towards them in the form of 
mercy, and that through this and the help of his 
good spiiit, they can be elevated into a pure and 
perfect fellowship with the Great Father and aU his 
holy family. But this assurance cannot be furnished 
by the most exalted Theism, pure and simple, and 
irrespective of any remedial system. It cannot even 
be furnished by any inspired and miraculously at- 
tested revelation, if this revelation is a mere affirma- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 105 

tion of love and a promise of pardon to the penitent ; 
because the afl5rmation would have to be interpreted 
in logical consistency with the perfect idea of the 
divine character ; and the apparent confliction and 
consequent doubt would practically nulhfy the affirm- 
ation by the style of interpretation which would 
thence be put upon it. 

There is a law of logical correlation, whicn ob- 
tains among mental and moral quahties. Every at- 
tribute impHes its opposite relative to opposite ob- 
jects or quahties. While patriotism is love toward 
our country, and everything that marks and pro- 
motes its honor and happiness, it is hatred toward 
everything which opposes and mars its honor and 
happmess. The love of beauty and of art is hatred 
toward ughness, and everything which degrades or 
injures the spirit and products of art. So in morals 
and rehgion, goodness and severity, love and hate, 
are countei-parts and complements of each other, 
and the capacity for either is a capacity for both, 
and the exercise of either toward one quahty logic- 
ally imphes the exercise of the other toward the op- 
posite quality. Benevolence itseK is hatred toward 
whatsoever is opposed to and obstructive of benev- 
olence and fosters sin and misery and wretched- 
ness, 



106 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIFNCK 

A law of absolute perfection is necessarily to be 
assumed as proceeding from such a God as we haye 
described. This is implied in what has been said, 
but it ought to have a distinct though brief state- 
ment. Such a Being can fully approve only per- 
fection. He must demand this in man, who must, 
therefore, be created perfect, or supphed with such 
provisions as will secure it, if properly used. The 
latter is the known order of the world. Moral per- 
fection must, in some of its forms at least, be of our 
own making, in the use of the power and means 
which God has furnished and bestowed. 

This perfect law can be nothing less or more than 
perfect love to God and all his creatures ; an abso- 
lute devotion to him, and a qualified devotion to 
them corresponding to theii* relative worth, so far as 
we know them. This is the law of Scripture, and 
whether it is a supernatural communication or not, 
it is certainly true, as a law, for us. It is the high- 
est possible of all moral conceptions — a conception 
which includes all others, and lies at the base of all 
others. The perfect and everlasting fulfillment of 
this law is the destination of all who truly make 
God their Ideal. He will surely help them to this 
great attainment, and all such must at last consti- 
tute a perfect society in perfect and exalted blessed- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 107 

ness. Such is alike the Scripture promise and the 
rational idea. 

In the meanwhile, the question as to the best 
method for God to promote this end, in relation to 
the violators of the law, is beset with difficulties — 
difficulties which pliilosophy has never been able 
entirely to overcome, but which we believe are over- 
come by the Gospel. 

The problem is : How could God show at once a 
pure and perfect regard for the law and its viola- 
tors? 

The New Testament answers : By self-sacrifice 
for the sinner in subjection to the law. The sacrifice 
of animals proves nothing, except as they typify the 
need of some better sacrifice. The sacrifice of the 
sinner himseK, in punishment by God, proves regard 
for law, but not for the sinner. To pardon the 
sinner, without any sacrifice, is to make a sacrifice 
of the law, thus showing concern for the sinner, but 
not for the sin or the law. 

Now, the only way we can show a strong and in- 
dubitable regard or high estimation for anything is 
by making sacrifices for it. The price we are willing 
to pay for it is the only possible testimony we can 
give of our estimate of its value, or the intensity and 
purity of our desire for its attainment. 



108 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 

It is just here that nature seems to speak for the 
mercy of God, and in consonance with his justice. 
He has planted love in the heart of the animate 
creation ; and this love shows itseK most indubitably 
and strikingly in self-denial for its objects. Thus, 
the animal suffers for its young. A good man suf- 
fers for his fellow-creatures. Fatherhood and mo- 
therhood are natural types of a love that is merciful, 
while regardful of right and duty. They will chas- 
tise where it pains themselves, and they will also 
suffer to save their children ; and they will often 
take the children's offences on themselves, and bear 
the penalty, rather than let it fall on their offspring. 
These are quoted by Christ as showing the disposi- 
tion of God, whom he describes as the supremely 
good Father. As the father lovingly mediates be- 
tween all in the family, regarding the rights of all, 
while forgiving and redeeming an offender, so God is 
the Father of us all. 

It is just here also that the opposing theory abuts 
itself. It grounds on the love and mercy exhibited 
in men to their children and to their fellows. These, 
it is said, are types of God, and shew the great 
Father ; and that from these we may confidently in- 
fer the divine mercy to the penitent, as the great 
Teacher taught us. We admit that this is a good ar- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 109 

gument. We believe that God's mercy is thus em- 
blemed. As we have already said, nature in our 
constitution thus affords some ground of hope to the 
penitent. But it should be borne in mind that we 
are not considering simply what may be rightly in- 
ferred by a rational and well-poised mind assured of 
the favor of God, but what is likely to be the feeling 
and action of one who is conscious of great sin, and 
sees and feels its true character as vile and hateful 
and injurious, and whose mind is thence darkened as 
to the character of God and the nature of true good- 
ness, and the meaning of the terms which desig- 
nate and describe it. We affirm that it would be 
hard for such an one to beUeve or conceive that 
God's love in cordial and full and perfect paternity 
could embrace him, uidess he had some other reasons 
than man's mercy, and a verbal assertion in revela- 
tion of God's mercy to man. This is supported by 
the facts of history. Wicked men, where the Gos- 
pel has not come, have never been led to peni- 
tence and a filial confidence and affection toward 
God by reflecting on the divine mercy to sinners 
manifested in man's merciful disposition. The very 
mention of the supposition has an air which is allied 
to the ridiculous. 

Further, the conscience-stricken sinner, the con-^ 



110 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCR 

ditions of whose salvation we are considering, may 
well reflect that the mercy of men, especially toward 
their own friends and kindred, may spring from 
moral imperfection instead of moral excellence, as it 
often does ; and they never can show that their love 
and forgiveness are perfectly pure and disinterested 
except by their suffering for the offender and their 
sacrifices for his weMare, and that Christ affords no 
such evidence of God's love and mercy except so far 
as God in him actually made a sacrifice of himseK 
for the world's redemption. Hence it is those who 
take this view of Christ's work who have always been 
the most effective preachers to the "pubhcans and 
sinners," to men and women who could make no 
pretension to moral and spiritual worth. It is the 
alleged sacrifice which God made in Christ for their 
salvation which has most powerfully awakened their 
conscience and touched their hearts and reformed 
their hves. This faith refutes every scruple of their 
conscience, fills to the utmost the deep yearnings of 
their aching hearts, and constitutes the loftiest and 
purest influence on their lives and their immortal 
hopes. 

Nor will the fear which is born of guilt fail to see 
that if man's constitution is to be taken as the type 
of God, the comparison cannot logically be confined 



CHRISTIAI^ C0KCEPTI02^ AND EXPERIENCE. HI 

to a few of man's exceptional excellences while his 
pride and vindictiveness and his stem and relentless 
demand for the fulfilment of personal rights, are ig- 
nored. The known manifestations of human pity 
and mercy are no decisive proof that the love and 
mercy of God embrace all his creatures, however 
wicked. It may help in some degree our faith in the 
divine goodness, especially to his own servants and 
children, who are not consciously and wilfully rebel- 
lious and this is all that Christ designed in this ref- 
erence. There is here no absolute assurance to the 
sinner. 

If God is imperfect like man in his moral char- 
acter, there is no sure guarantee of good to those who 
have wilfully displeased him. If God is infinitely 
perfect, as the true God must be, he can only faintly 
be adumbrated by man, and his integrity may require 
that the full penalty of the law fall on each trans- 
gressor. Certainly it can never make light of the 
law and its transgression. It must hold the one in 
infinite reverence and the other in infinite detesta- 
tion ; and how this can operate with mercy for the 
sinner, remains for the sinner the problem of prob- 
lems. Nothing can fully assure him till a method is 
unfolded which satisfies both his intellect and his 
heart, which reconciles the di\T.ne perfections, reveals 



112 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCR 

an equal scope for the divine justice and mercy, and 
shows the Almighty as at once ^^ a just God and a 
Saviour.'' Till this is done the sinner is liable to 
gloomy forebodings and to the moral depression and 
depravation which these entail. It should be ob- 
served, too, that a clear view of the heinous nature of 
sin and of the sacredness and immutability of the 
moral law is necessary to a sinner's reformation and 
true moral renovation ; and it is this view which 
here forms the obstacle to his salvation till he sees 
how this sacredness of the law can be conserved by 
God at the same time that he delivers the sinner from 
the penalty which it justly denounces against him 
This is the only testimony that w^e can accept or 
understand respecting God's love alike for the law 
and its violator, the testimony which is furnished 
in the doctrine of the divine incarnation and atone- 
ment by Jesus Christ. Christ is, in some pecu- 
liar and extraordinary w^ay, " God manifest in the 
flesh," subject to the law in serving man, " magnify- 
ing the law and making it honorable " by such ex- 
traordinary subjection and obedience to it ; and 
then He dies as if He were a sinner, declaring that 
all this is done that He may save the sinner '* dying 
the just for the unjust that He may bring them untr 
God." If in Christ God makes no manner of sacr 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, II3 

fice, the New Testament is false and misleading ; 
and we still want proof tliat God loves botli the 
law and its violator ; and the possibility of mercy 
to any sinner remains inexplicable. 

If, on the other hand, God did make a sacrifice, 
every difficulty in the way of a penitent sinner's 
faith and hope, is removed. Here we have the ideal 
of Theism exalted to a loftier height, and pregnant 
with an effective beneficence which is impossible 
without this sacrifice. This is the true ideal because 
it is the highest, on the same principle on which we 
have argued for the truth of Theism, irrespective 
of the peculiar doctrine of the New Testament as a 
scheme of salvation for sinners. If the highest good 
is not the true, then science and philosophy are on 
the wrong track in pursuing truth as the highest 
end or good. 



114 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

CAN GOD SUFFER? 

This is resisted in some quarters on the ground 
tliat God cannot suffer. Here we meet a metaphys- 
ical principle which has held extensive sway in 
philosophy, and often extended its influence into 
the domain of theology. But it has always appeared 
to me that an incapacity for all suffering is itself a 
mark of Umitation and imperfection. A faculty of 
enjoyment is also a faculty of suffering, because 
every such faculty must follow a law of enjoyment, 
and when that law is transgressed,^ it becomes a 
source and agency of pain. This is exempUfied in 
all the senses. It is also exemplified in the aesthetic 
faculty ; and the more exquisite the taste, the keener 
is the pleasure or the pain from the fulfillment or 
violation of that law. The same principle holds 
good of the logical faculty and its laws. Love in 
all its forms is a source of intense delight, and for 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCK US 

the same reason it is, when crossed, a source of cor- 
responding pain. Now, combine love with the 
moral faculty and we have the holy love of God, 
which He feels toward all his creatures, but espe- 
cially toward the good. Their virtue and happiness 
must be a source of pleasure to Him, and for the 
same reason their sin and misery must be a source 
of pain. This is what the Scriptures affirm. " In 
all their affliction He was afflicted." Scripture 
abounds in the most ardent expressions of divine joy 
and sorrow oyer the different moral conditions and 
prospects of men. The pity and sympathy of God . 
are also depicted in the most vivid colors. If all 
these expressions mean nothing, if they do not mean 
just what they say, He who is called God is no God 
to me. I would rather have a man or a woman for 
my friend than he. To him I can never go for com- 
fort, or to unbosom to him my griefs and cares. A 
god without sympathy, is a god without love or hate 
— a mere wooden thing — not God. A god without 
moral displeasures is without moral pleasures, and 
displeasures are pains, and are therelore put as the 
correlative of pleasures. A capacity for pain or suf- 
fering and self denial in some degrees and forms is 
necessary to the existence of God, without which 
He would not be God. 



116 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCK 



It is nnayailing to object tliat this makes God par- 
tially -Qnliappy, and tlius limits his perfection. 
God is just as happy as the totality of infinite capa» 
bilities render possible ; and the supposition of any 
higher happiness than that is self contradictory. The 
degree of pain is infinitesimal relative to the plea- 
sure, and the capacity for the former is necessary to 
the latter, and so is a constituent of his dignity, 
glory and felicity. 

While the prevailing philosophy concerning the 
passionlessness of the divine nature has been pro- 
ductive of frequent inconsistencies among orthodox 
divines, yet, they have always affirmed, explicitly or 
implicitly, that incarnate in Christ God sufiered in 
sacrifice for the world^s redemption. In the fourth 
century, Cyril of Jerusalem, is described as using the 
following language : ^^He who died for us was no 
insignificant creature. He was no mere man, he was 
not an angel; but ^e was God^ Hence he infers 
that ^' the sins we have committed are not equal to 
the atonement made by him who died for us." Dr. 
Shedd tells us that the Nestorians erred in making 
Christ's sufferings purely human, and that the Euty- 
chians erred 'in the opposite direction by making 
those sufferings to be purely divine, and tliat the 
Church teaches that Christ suffers as a theanthropic 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. \YJ 

person, as both human and divine in nature, as the 
God-man. 

Anselm's great work on the atonement, Cur Deus 
Homo^ is pregnant with the same idea. He argues 
that God cannot pardon sin without a satisfaction to 
justice, and that this satisfaction in a scheme of mercy 
is possible only by substituted or vicarious suffering, 
that no finite sacrifice can suffice, and that God only 
can make the required satisfaction. It is obvious that 
the satisfaction and sacrifice on the part of God are 
nullified if God does not in any wise suffer. The 
doctrine of Anselm respecting the divine sacrifice has 
always been the doctrine of the Church, East and 
West. The Church also has always held to his 
ground of the sacrifice, as a sacrifice to justice, al- 
though it has sometimes differently expounded jus- 
tice in its relation to the sacrifice. 

Of the forms of the sacred and divine passion we 
are indisposed to speak. With caution and reverence 
we tread this hallowed ground. If Christ is a thean- 
thropic person the suffering belongs to that person in 
its totality. This will include even physical suffer- 
ing, to the conditions of which God has subjected 
himself. At the very least, and in any case, Christ 
is the representative impersonation of Deity, and 
from sympathy and federal identity Deity may thus 



118 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERILNCK 

snfier in Christ as a monarch suflEers in the indignities 
put upon his ambassador. On. this subject we pre- 
fer to say no more. 



CHBISTIAN CONOEFTION AJSD EXFEBIENCR HQ 



CHAPTER XV. 



ATONEMENT. 



In the statement that Christ sufiered to show the 
divine regard for law on the one side and for the sin- 
ner on the other side we have given the substance of 
our philosophy of the Christian doctrine of the atone- 
ment, and it is therefore proper here to give that doc- 
trine a more explicit statement. 

We hold that the suffering of Christ was substitu- 
tionary or vicarious. But these words, just used, 
must not be interpreted in any very narrow and rigid 
sense. This substitution does not find its precise 
parallel in the voluntary death of one man to save 
another from death. Here the deaths are parallel. 
Not so are the death of Christ and that from which 
the sinner is saved. Christ does not save from the 
kind of death which he undergoes. He dies a tem- 
poral and physical death to save from spiritual, legal 
and eternal death. He therefore does not suffer either 



120 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

in kind or degree an exact equivalent for the sins of 
men. It is true that he may have suffered as much 
as all the redeemed would have had to suffer. But 
V7e have no proof that he did, and the supposition is 
revolting, as giving to the Deity a sort of Shylock as- 
pect of pound for pound. Then, there is no economy 
in this. If the full measure of suffering has to be 
indured, there is nothing gained to benevolence, 
and one party may as well suffer as another, so far as 
concerns pure and universal benevolence. The sup- 
position differs from the normal operation of justice 
only in its transference of punishment from the guilty 
to the innocent. In this case, it were surely better 
for the guilty to bear their own punishment, and for 
the innocent to enjoy the rights and immunities of 
their innocence. 

It is true that it may be well for one friend to pay 
the entire debt of another friend; but the substitu- 
tion of Christ is not of this kind, else the sinner's 
liberation would not be of grace, but of debt or 
right and justice, which the apostle Paul repudiates, 
and which every sinner's reason and conscience repu- 
diate. 

Besides, if, as the particular redemptionists affirm 
it is the Deity in Christ that gives to Christ's suffer- 
ing their supreme value, the entire conception is thus 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 121 

stultified because there is no third party here. He to 
whom all the debt is due, paj^s all the debt Himself; 
that is, there is no payment at all. The creditor suf- 
fers the entire loss of the original defalcation, and then 
He voluntarily throws away an equivalent to it ; and 
on this ground he remits the sin and debt of the de- 
faulter ! Thus this theory of atonement, which boasts 
its regard for strict retributive justice, is absolutely 
devoid of its alleged prime quality. 

If Christ, as a mere creature^ comes in as the third 
party, and besides fulfilling his own debt to God, also 
pays ours by suffering in our place, then indeed we 
have a parallel to one man's payment of a debt for 
another. But here, we repeat, there is no mercy in 
either case, and the only evidence of benevolence is 
exhibited by the man Christ who pays the debt, not 
by the creditor, God, since he exacts and receives all 
his due, sacrificing nothing, and remitting nothing. 

Besides, such a conception of one creature meeting 
the moral obligations of another is contrary to all 
reason and Scripture. It is self -contradictory, because 
all moral merit and demerit are exclusively and ab- 
solutely personal and individualistic. Every creature 
is also bound by the supreme law of his being to serve 
the Lord with his power, so that when he has done 
his best he is but an unprofitable servant, and all 



122 OHEISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

works of supererogation are impossible. In short, on 
this theory of equivalence of suffering, (which is only 
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth) neither 
Grod nor man can make any atonement for a sinner. 

All suffering is substitutionary or vicarious, what- 
ever its form or degree, when it is voluntarily incur- 
red to save any person from the legitimate conse- 
quences of his wrong action. It is at once a proof of 
love to the transgressor, and of reverence for the 
power, whatever that may be, which condemns and 
punishes the transgression. In the light of this 
principle, the Scripture doctrine of atonement, by 
the vicarious suffering of Christ, becomes distinctly 
intelligible and definable. It now becomes suscepti- 
ble of illustration by parallelisms in human action. 
An atoning sacrifice is love voluntarily suffering for 
another for the removal of sin and its consequences ; 
and all such sufferings is such a sacrifice. 

The sufferings of father, mother or other friends, 
to save an erring one from a bad course and its con- 
sequences, are true types of the Father and the Son 
in the Gospels. 

The quality of the sufferer here is a point of prime 
importance. There is an infnito sacredness and 
dignity attaching to all suffering, of which the Deity 
is the subject. Therefore, we do not essay to deter- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 123 

mine how much Christ has suffered. We have no 
standard of measurement for the suffering of such a 
being, so that this point must be left in absolute 
indefiniteness. Yet we must be explicit in affirming 
and repeating that the suffering of Deity must be 
real. God does not merely give dignity to the suffer- 
ing of the man Christ Jesus, but also and truly 

suffers in unison with the man , else we have 

proof of the man's love and holiness only, not of 
God's. 

The sacrificial suffering here affirmed was not an 
arbitrary transaction. Though voluntary, it was a 
moral necessity. Men's action toward Jesus was 
the normal operation of their nature relative to their 
circumstances, and his character and teachings. On 
the other hand, the action of Deity in Christ had a 
like necessity, only here it was more absolute, being 
the result of an eternal mutuability. With God 
nothing can be arbitrary. Everything he does must 
be in accordance with the intrinsic law of his nature 
of infinite perfection, and it is always alike proper 
and right, and even a duty as well as a moral neces- 
sity. Being infinitely perfect, he could not do either 
better or worse, because he always does, and must 
do, what is best supremely. " We, that are strong, 
ought to bear the infirmities of the weak !" Every 



124 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

man is bound to love his neighbor, even though his 
neighbor be wicked ; and he is, therefore, bound to 
endeavor, by all available means, to benefit and save 

^Jiis neighbor. This is the law of the divine nature, 
/ which must make its demand upon himself, and for 
that reason it makes a demand on all intelligences. 
This is the law of love, which is also the true and 
supreme law of justice. Hence, God could not have 
elected to pass over man without any effort for his 
salvation, much less could he have sent all to hell 
\ because of such neglect of them. Still further, if it 
were possible to make pro^dsion for all, he could 
not possibly elect to save some and make provision 
for them only, and pass over the rest, and then 
damn these for ever for the necessary consequence. 
He was bound to save all, if possible, and to make 
provision accordingly, so far as possible. While 
sinners have forfeited all claims which belong to 
righteousness, they have not forfeited any of the 
claims which belong to them as sentient beings. 
These never can be forfeited. So long as such beings 
exist, their sufferings have a paramount claim upon 
goodness and love ; and, on the othel* hand, good- 
ness and love necessarily fly, wherever possible, to 
the relief of misery, whatever be its cause. Of 

( course, the misery cannot be relieved without the 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 125 

removal of its cause ; and, if the cause is moral, the 
principle holds with supreme and absolute emphasis. 
Here, therefore, holy love seeks, first and supremely, 
the necessary moral change. If the moral change 
cannot be effected, the misery is immutable. Wheth- 
er this is or will be so, in any case, does not con- 
cern our present discussion. 

So the man Christ Jesus, learning the will of the 
heavenly Father, w^as bound to co-operate therewith, 
in consonance with the primary duty of all to do what 
they can for the good of all. But, in " the Son of 
Man," as such, while there was no moral obligation, 
there was a moral necessity. He was under pro- 
bation with the special or supernatural moral 
freedom, which, by logical necessity, belongs to 
all who are making their own moral character 
and destiny. He could have rejected the yoke 
which was laid upon him ; that is, he could have 
sinned and fallen along with other men. But, be- 
ing faithful, he becomes the "Saviour of all men, 
especially of them that beheve." 

The sacrificial offering of Christ does not necessari- 
ly affect the moral character of the sinner. It does 
not remove his intrinsic guilt and put it on Christ. 
The transgressor of the law is still a sinner, guilty, 
and the necessary object of moral reprobation. The 



126 CHB18TIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENGE. 

intrinsic moral demerit of the party for whom the sac- 
rifice is made remains immutably the same as surely 
as the woof remains in the web. The death of Christ 
only so far changes the relation of God to the sinner 
and the dishonored and desecrated law, that He can 
more fully carry out with propriety and best effect 
his benevolent wishes toward the sinner ; and it gives 
the sinner the highest possible ground for trust- 
ing the mercy of God. It is with the highest 
and holiest majesty that God can now say to 
the sinner : '' Turn unto me and I will receive 
you, and the past shall be covered up as lead 
is sunk in the sea." In ^' receiving sinners," God 
cannot now be suspected of '^ making light of sin." 
A moral majesty which combines infinite love- 
liness and awfulness, now appears alike in every 
word of admonition and warning, and in every ex- 
pression of tenderness and every gracious promise and 
invitation. 

The atonement, which is the ground of the alleged 
"justification" of the believer, does not either make 
or prove him just. He is not just, and never can be, 
in the sense of meeting all just claims. His past sin 
must ever remain as the monument of an undis- 
charged and undischargeable obligation. The atone- 
ment is rather a justification of God than of man, as 



CHBI8TIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 127 

it is a proof of the divine justice and benevolence, re- 
vealing Hm as a ^' just God and Saviour." The be- 
liever's justification is the believer's pardon, with, a 
sufficient reason for it. The mystery which has been 
wrapped around the term justification relative to be- 
lievers has not invested it with an element of 
either power or beauty. Its removal dissipates per- 
plexity and gathering skepticism, and permits the 
rays of the divine mercy to fall upon us without 
obstruction or diffraction. Its diflraction may please 
the fancy of some, but only those who do not per- 
ceive or care that it involves, by obstruction and dis- 
sipation, a diminution in the effective operation of 
the blessed, life-giving and life-sustaining agency. 

The atonement, thus conceived, reveals the harmo- 
nious action of the divine attributes. This has al- 
ways been one of the great difficulties in the way of 
a logical and philosophical exposition of Christian 
theology. Philosophy has never been able to con- 
ceive how the divine attributes can be fully exer- 
cised in consonance with each other. Hence we have 
been presented with the paradox that divine justice 
must punish to the utmost all transgression, and that 
divine love and mercy must prevent all misery from 
whatever cause, because both attributes, it is said, 
are equally infinite. On the other hand, to escape 



128 CHRmTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFERIENE. 

the difficulties respecting the perfect operation of 
justice and mercy, others have invented the doc- 
trine of gradation in the relative dignity and im- 
portance of the attributes and excellencies of the 
divine mind. Benevolence they exalt above jus- 

[ tice, and hence claim that it is but right and 
proper that, as there is a confliction between the two, 

j justice should yield to love. This argument contra 
diets itself, for it pleads that it is right or just to dis- 
\ pi-nse with what is right and just ! "We cannot justly 
""argue for the suspension of justice or for any subor- 
dination which restricts its full and proper action. 
None of the attributes of Grod can be subordinated 
and held in abeyance. That would show him imper- 
fect. His entire nature is always right, and must 
iiiive unlimited scope and exercise, and so the attrib- 
utes must he reconciled without relative subordina- 
tion and without restiiction of any. 

In further attempting this reconciliation, justice is 
pronounced' to be only a mode of benevolence, benev- 
olence being the all-comprehending virtue, and jus- 
tice one of the modes in which it works, a mode 
which may or may not exist and operate, according 
as wisdom in view of the relations of things may de- 
mand. But this again is only a plea for the suspen- 
-sion of justice on the ground that the suspension 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 129 

mav sometimes be ririit and reasonable. Whether 
or not justice be a mode of benevolence, it is cer- 
tainly no transient or mutable mode, or one which, is 
limited in time, or place, or circumstance. It is but 
an identical proposition to say that it cannot law- 
fully or righty be ignored in the act or thought of 
any intelligent being. Nothing is gained, therefore, 
by calling it a mode of ^' benevolence guided by wis- ' 
dom." It none the less demands obedience and satis- 
faction everywhere and always. 

If benevolence is considered as synonymous with 
love, justice is a mode of benevolence in the sense 
that all other attributes are so, under the idea that 
Gotl is love. But this only confuses instead of sim- 
plifying. The declaration that God is love is not a 
perfect description of the divine attributes. God is 
love only toward what is intrinsically or instrument- 
ally good. Toward all else we ma}^ say that God is 
hate. [Love implies hatred. It is self-contradictory 
to suppose the former without the latter. He who 
loves the right hates the wrong. This hatred is not 
benevolence, though it is coincident with benevo- 
lence, and its operation will have a benevolent re- 
sult; but its sole and simple aim is to destroy or dis- 
able the sin, or to punish it. 

Now, as God must feel this hatred to sin with in- 



130 CHRISTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

finite purity and emphasis, lie must give it vent in 
some action relative to the sinner; and before his 
benevolence can deliver the sinner, this feeling must 
be crystalized or organized in some adequate expres- 
sion of its nature and demands. This is possible 
only b}^ substitutionaiy suffering, and this is expia- 
tion, and an example of that vindicatory justice 
which does not terminate on the offender. In ac- 
cordance with this, we adopt the formula in which 
Dr. Hodge gives the orthodox view of the atonement 
of Christ, that it is ^'a real satisfaction, of infinite 
inherent merit, to the vindicatory justice of God, so 
that he saves his people by doing for them and in 
their stead what they were unable to do for them, 
selves, satisfying the demands of the law in their be- 
half, and bearing its penalty in their stead ; whereby 
they are reconciled to God, receive the Holy Ghost, 
and are made partakers of the life of Christ to their 
present sanctification and eternal life." But it is in. 
evitable that different meanings must be attached to 
the same words by different minds, and our concep- 
tion of this formula, therefore, demands a little expo- 
sition. 

"What is due to any being as sentinent and pos- 
sessed of various powers which may be used for 
good or evil? What is due to righteousness? 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 131 

What is due to unrighteousness or anti-righteousness. 
The answer to these three questions will cover the 
whole subject under discussion ; and as briefly as 
possible we will give the answers which appear to 
us to be true, and final or ultimate. 

1. What is due to any being or beings, as sen- 
tient and possessed of various powers which may be 
used for good or evil? We answer — ^love, a love 
which takes pleasure in those powers as such, and in 
their action and development to the highest degree, 
and hence a love and a pleasure which are propor- 
tioned to the respective degrees of those powers. 
This is what President Edwards calls "the love of be- 
ing,' in which he considers virtue essentially to con- 
sist. It would be easy to show by various facts that 
this is the principle on wldch all men form their 
judgments, and that it underlies all their moral deci- 
sions. But we will not enlarge. If any one asks 
why this is due to all being from all being, there is 
no answer. This is an ultimate principle, and for 
those who cannot see it there is no help, except 
possibly in illustrations, in which we cannot indulge. 
We are here at the last remove of thought in the 
moral region ; and how^ever much we may multiply 
examples, which each may do for himseK, we have 
to depend at last on our own power of pure syn- 



132 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

thetic intuition as our only light. He who lacks 

this and sees not this principle must here be left 
out of account. He is either beneath or above us 
and for him we do not write. 

This principle requires and implies that being shall 
be thus delighted in any case only so far as its de- 
velopment is not contrary to the laws of develop- 
ment for all ; else we do not love all being as being, 
but only this or that being, which is contrary to our 
prime principle, and is selfisli, sinful. 

Universal benevolence is thus seen to be the fun- 
damental moral law of all being, whether of God or 
man ; and by law here we do not mean merely a uni- 
form series of facts, but a uniform obligation, whether 
it be transmuted into fact or not. In other words, 
this is the claim which each and every sentient being 
makes on all others who have intelligence and will, 
and this claim is made because it is just and right. 
Thus benevolence itself is grounded injustice, and it 
may be pronounced to be merely a mode of justice, 
with as much propriety as justice is pronounced a 
mode of benevolence. Nay, far more so. Pure be- 
nevolence can enforce nothing. Only rights and 
justice can enforce anything. These are therefore 
the primary conceptions of moi'al philosophy, and 
these enjoin universal benevolence. Universal be- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I33 

nevolence is right and just, and for this reason it is 
approved and extolled. NJ^ 

2. What is due to righteousness or righteous being ? 
We answer — approval of it, and identification with 
it in such forms and connections as we think will best 
enable us to promote it, and with it also, therefore 
the greatest well-being of the universe. Here the 
greatest well-being is seen to be righteousness, and 
non-moral well-being is subordinate to this. 

3. What is due to unrighteousness ? We owe to 
this hatred, detestation and active antagonism with 
all the powers of our being, as against what has no 
right to exist, and what ought to be destroyed, and 
must so far as possible be divested of power, because 
it is wrong, and it is wrong because it is opposed to 
the first law of all being, universal benevolence. It 
is wilfuU, partial and selfish love instead of universal, 
and hence it is hatred toward all that opposes its sel- 
fishness, that is, against all that is right. 

But how is this antagonism against wrong to be 
exercised ? According to the law of right, which en- 
joins the love of being, of all being, and which there- 
fore enjoins the removal wherever possible of what- 
ever dishonors and injures any being. It binds all 
the holy universe to use all its power to destroy sin, 
^nd thus save its wretched subjects and victims. 



134 CBBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

Where all possible efforts are futile, everlasting de- 
struction from the presence of the Lord and the glory 
of his power must ejisue ; but before this, all possible 
efforts must be made. 

How is this to be done ? 

By the most clear and powerful manifestations of 
the terrible and detestable nature and operation of 
sin; of the self-created and self -perpetuated baseness 
and guiltiness of the sinner, since he has chosen the 
evil, and rejected the right and good, wlien he had 
power to do otherwise ; of the moral horrors which it 
must entail on its subject, the uiter perversion, dark- 
ness and chaos with which it blights and drapes and 
curses all things ; the infinite sacredness of the vio- 
lated law, and its awful power to avenge itself on 
its transgressor, and the certainty and relentlessness 
of its dire operation; in remorse, the internal and in- 
satiable viper, the reptile which never dies, and in the 
burning fever-agony of chagrin and shame, and self- 
despite under conscious aiid everlasting failure and 
ruin, and under the clear and cloudless gaze, which is 
ever fixed upon them from the holy, happy universe, 
and from God over all blessed forever, whose eye 
searches them through and through, and sets their 
sins in the light of his countenance. 

It is also to be done by showing, on the other 



CHRISTIAN CONCEFTIOIS AND KXTERIENUR I35 

hand, the charm and beauty, the strength and grand- 
eur of holy love, how it gives to the humblest of its 
subjects the intellectual and moral breadth and ele- 
vation which comprehend the universe ; how it must 
eventually gain the victory, yea, become more than 
conqueror over all the selfisli forces which now bat- 
tle so bitterly against it, and from the tlirone of its 
eternal triumph look down upon its vanquished foes 
only to gather inspiration for its ceaseless song of 
praise unto him that sitteth upon the throne and to 
the Lamb forever and ever ; how, in the meanwhile, 
it knows no desire so strong, no joy so deep, so rich 
and sweet as the promotion of the salvation of sin- 
ners, that for this it freely makes the greatest of all 
possible sacrifices, that the eternal God, himself eter- 
nal love, makes the infinite sacrifice of sufferings 
mysterious and awful in the creature's form and the 
creature's place, that He may bring that creature 
back from self and sin, to holiness and love ; how 
there is hence a pathway of escape opened up to the 
lost, with guides and helps according to need along 
the route ; and how forgiveness of sin, and forbear- 
ance with entailed infirmity await them, and how the 
all powerful sanctifying grace and the loving em- 
brace of the eternal and holy Father are ready to 
enfold them, and to introduce them into all personal 
and blessed moral associations and harmonies. 



136 CHBI8TIAN GONGEFTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 

All this is the measure of value, which God and 
the holy creation set upon the restoration of the sin- 
ner. It is the necessary proof of the high value 
they set upon his happiness, and is thus in the high- 
est meaning and degree a vindication of the power 
and dignity of love. It proves in like manner how 
much they esteemed holiness or righteousness, and 
how much they desired it in the sinner, and thus it 
is a vindication of the right, or of duty and justice. 

Therefore, it is a vindication of the law. All this 
suffering and effort are in conformity with the law, 
and in obedience to the law, in order that the trans- 
gressor of the law may be delivered from his transgres- 
sion and its penalty. This, in the highest sense, is 
vindicatory justice and expiation of sin. It is thus 
that Christ bears our penalties, and the chastisement 
of our peace was upon him. 

This fulfills the law relative to the Creator, as it 
meets all the demands which his own nature makes. 
It must be so, since it is of his own appointment and 
execution, and is declared and accepted by him as a 
satisfaction. Necessitated by his infinite perfection, 
He has obeyed to the last jot and title the law of holi- 
ness and love, which demanded these efforts for the 
destruction of sin, and the salvation of the sinner. 
Here, therefore, nothing more is wanting. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION' AND EXPERIENCE. I37 

Nor is anything wanting on the part of the nnf al- 
ien holy creation. They have concurred and co-oper- 
ated with their Creator, and have fulfilled his will, 
and with him, as just and holy, they are satisfied 
with and rejoice in the process and result. 

It meets all the wants of the redeemed sinner, as 
seen in the issue, his sanctiflcation. He is more than 
satisfied. The sinner's wants or miseries and sinful- 
ness, make a demand on the sinless for such efforts 
and measures as are necessary for his salvation, 
whatever these may be, and they demand no more. 
The sinner's salvation is one proof that the demands 
have been met, that all the law of the case has been 
fulfilled. 

Nothing now remains. There is no law in tlie 
universe except the law of the creative and created 
natures. There is no abstract law which does not 
grow out of these. The law of laws for the all uni- 
verse to all eternity, is the perfect nature of the in- 
finite God, and its law is love, the love of being and 
of right, or benevolent and holy love. The work of 
Christ is God's great vindication of himself by a 
great and successful effort and sacrifice for the gene- 
ration of love and holiness in a sinful race. Sin had 
aspersed him as well as marred his work ; and among 
the fallen, at least, there was a doubt of his perfec- 



138 CHRISTIAN CONCEP TION AND EXPEBIENCR 

tion, and this doubt is the greatest of all calamities 
to the universe. Let it spread, and all lights burn 
dim, all the chimes of the universe reveal a discord 
or a diminution of their harmony. The perfect rap 
ture of the good and pure is no more. That highest 
lustre of face and eye, visible glory of the rapt soul 
in its worship of the Infinite, has passed away. The 
highest felicity and beauty and power of the fin- 
ite can only be attained in its absolute abandon 
in a consciously accepted service and adoration ren- 
dered unto a Personality of infinite perfection. The 
exhibition and proof of this perfection, was there- 
fore of supreme importance. All else, however 
great, compared with this, is a mere bagatelle. The 
fuller exhibition of himself, therefore, was the high- 
est end He could ever propose, even for the salva- 
tion of the universe, as this is the highest and mighti- 
est of all possible moral reasons and forces. He 
needed, therefore, to obey, and thus reveal, his own 
nature of love and holiness, so far as was necessary 
to attain the end sought in the creature, and then all 
moral law from the nadir to the zenith of the moral 
universe is fulfilled. No law called for an3^thing 
but such action as would exhibit in biwhter colors 
the divine perfection in love and holiness or right- 
eousness, and secure the moral recovery of sinners, 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 139 

SO that Christ should thus see the travail of his soul, 
and be satisfied. 

According to the foregoing exposition of the atone- 
ment, it follows that if man could have been rescued 
without any sacrifice it would have been done, and 
the saved soul would have been just as acceptable as 
it is now, as bought with the precious blood of 
Christ. This must be admitted, and if it cannot be 
defended, our exposition is wrong. 

Against this it is often argued that if man were 
recovered from his sinful estate without an atone- 
ment for his past sin, that sin would still call for ven- 
geance, and would debar his restoration to the priv- 
ileges of the family of God till justice had a victim 
either in the sinner or a substitute. This is a sup- 
position which perhaps ought not to be made, be- 
cause it is a supposition of the impossible. At all 
events, no sinner can be spiritually restored, except 
by the grace of God, and the holy love which has 
done this cannot do otherwise than love, embrace, 
and foster its own holy image and offspring, sacrifice 
or no sacrifice. Any other supposition contradicts 
itself. 

God "will have mercy and not sacrifice." If a 
creature is pure and holy, that is all that God can 
ever ask. It is all that He ever does ask or enjoin. 



140 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCK 

"Be ye holy" is his supreme command. Holiness is 
perfectly satisfied with holiness, wherever and when- 
ever it finds it. It cannot reject its own likeness in 
a soul because it has not always been there. It is so 
far unconcerned about the past. Times and the dif- 
ferences of past times are here impertinent. Holi- 
ness loves holiness in all beings, and accepts and 
loves all its subjects with perfect and supreme de- 
hght. It cannot wait for or demand any other satis- 
faction as a condition of enjoying this ; and indeed 
to holiness there can be but one demand and one 
satisfaction — holiness. Holiness, then, would be 
content if man were spiritually restored without sac- 
rifice. Holiness includes justice, and neither is op- 
posed to aught but sin ; and sin being removed, they 
gladly sheath their sword. 

Much more obvious is this principle relative to the 
divine benevolence. This seeks happiness only, but 
in consonance with holiness ; and while it withholds 
its benefactions from all that is wrong, it is free and 
lavish everywhere else. The law of love, which is 
also the law of justice, enjoins that only sin shall be 
hated and chastised; and ihat therefore where the sin 
is removed aversion and opposition are to be replaced 
by affection and favor. 

But, as we have said, it was impossible for man to 



CHBISTIAI^ CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 141 

be restored without a sacrifice. God performs no 
superfluous task. Without the shedding of blood 
there is no remission, and only the blood of the in- 
carnate Deity would suffice. Sin alienates the of- 
fended from the injured party, and begets an unbe- 
lief in goodness and holiness, while at the same time 
it fosters an obstinate pride relative to its own wrong 
doing. Nothing but self-denying or sacrificial exhib- 
itions of love and purity can reveal the beauty of 
holiness and the sacredness of love, or ever touch the 
obdurate spirit of wicked pride, and lead it to con- 
fession and self -humbling, or dissipate its dark unbe- 
lief, so that in true penitence and faith it can accept a 
proffered amnesty. It is only this which made the 
great sacrifice necessary. "God so loved the world 
as to give his only begotten Son'' to save ifc. Love, 
holy love, was the sole motive, and man's opposite 
character was the sole need, so that man's spirit 
could not be favorably impressed by aught less than 
the divine incarnation. Deity in the place and form 
of man, subject to human obligations and infirmities, 
and thus as the sinless victim of his own love to man 
dying as if he were the sinner, and for the sinner's 
sake. This is satisfactory to the extent of compen- 
sating for the sacrifices. " And T, if I be lifted up, 
will draw all men unto me." The attracting power 



142 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCR 

of the cross was the end of the sacrifice, and the lat- 
ter the means to the former. We have thus given 
what appears to be a rational account of the atone- 
ment, but we do not assume that we have exhausted 
the subject. There is doubtless here an infinite 
depth which our finite plumb-line can never fathom, 
the shadow of a sacred mystery before which we 
stand in devout and speechless awe. But we have 
light enough to see a wisdom and goodness in this 
doctrine which meets all the demands alike of our in- 
tellect and heart, and that whatever of mystery re- 
mains is only dark with excess of light, and is neces- 
sarily in harmony with the light in which our intellect 
dwells and operates. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I43 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION. 

If the Christian Conception is superior to all others, 
so that it stands without a rival worthy of competi- 
tive consideration, and if this Conception, instead of 
losing, acquires fresh lustre with the progress of 
thought and the advancement of the human mind, (as 
it must do if it is infinitely perfect,) the question nat- 
urally arises : What is the origin of this Conception ? 
How did we come to arrive at it ? "We will now con- 
sider this question as an appendix to the foregoing 
argument. 

The history of this Conception is perfectly clear. 
We derive it from the Jewish race. This race is 
now about four thousand years old, for we know just 
when and where it began, and we have a remarkably 
clear and full, though terse, account of its founder 
and of this line of his posterity. In all this period 
this race has done nothing eminently great or good 
except in the production of the Bible ; and all the 



144 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

glory of the persons it describes is derived from their 
teaching and exemplification of the Christian or The- 
istic Ideal. The volume contains some noble and 
sublime poetry ; but this poetry derives all its force 
and elevation from the Theistic Idea. The same is 
true of all its prose teachings both in the Old and New 
Testaments. There appears to have been one great 
secular man among them, Soloman — almost a Bacon 
in royal robes, if you judge from some descriptions 
of him. Yet, if you scan him with a critical judg- 
ment, his greatness some what dwindles. The evi- 
dences of it are rather meager and unsatisfactory. 
His surpassing greatness is relative only to the Jews 
and other Jewish monarchs, not to the great men of 
the gentile world. 

it is clear that the Jews conceived God as per- 
sonal, and as the absolute Creator of men and mat- 
ter, and all other finite things. This, exalted and 
refined, is the granite foundation of all that Christ 
taught and the apostles preached, and constitutes a 
part of these teachings. The conception of the per- 
sonality of God was common to all polytheists, and 
the Jewish notion may be hence explained, but 
only partially ; for the Jew, the true Jew, discarded 
polytheism, and combined, in an inexplicable way, 
the divine unity and personality, and omnipresence, 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE, I45 

distinct from the world — an idea which, in its com- 
plexity and unity, was absolutely peculiar to him, 
and is still peculiar to him and the Christian rehg- 
ion. How he attained to this idea, which no phil- 
osophy has yet attained or is able to conceive — an 
idea, too, which no reKgion contains, is a problem 
which we cannot easily solve, on the principles of 
mere naturalism. If Moses received it by the super- 
natural inspiration of God and the teachings of his 
forefathers who were so taught, as he affirmed, then 
the problem is solved. If the possibility of super- 
naturahsm is denied, we have, then, an unsolved 
problem, at least, if not an insoluble one ; and we 
are certainly entitled to say now, in reference to the 
problem, that the possibility of a naturalistic solu- 
tion seems very improbable, as something very ex- 
traordinary will have to be discovered as a condition 
of such a solution, in accordance with the laws of 
sound criticism and induction. 

If we pass on to the times of Jesus, we find a 
similar difficulty, in conceiving the wonderful ad- 
ditions which were then made to the Theistic con- 
ception. We can discover nothing in those times, or 
in the condition of the Jewish nation, that could be- 
token such a change, or be the cause of such an 
effect. The nation was wTithing imder the iron 



146 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENGE. 

bondage of Rome, and its better energies were 
stifled, or embittered and contracted, the natural 
consequence of oppression and wrong. Their bigotry 
and exclusiveness had now attained their most per- 
fect development. The Messiah whom they looked 
for was exclusively a Jew in all the quahties of his 
nature, in the ends he was to accomplish, and in the 
limitation of his sympathies. There appears, there- 
fore, absolutely nothing to foster the character and 
conceptions of Jesus. We may, therefore, well ask 
concerning him, as his contemporaries did, " How 
knoweth this man letters, having never learned ?" 
How knoweth he, and teacheth with so much 
clearness, force, and authority what man had never 
thought, what opposed all the tendencies, and estab- 
hshed usages and tenets of his country and his age ? 
It is a question which the ages have in vain endeav- 
ored to answer satisfactorily without having re- 
course to supernaturaUsm. We do not here affirm 
that such solution is impossible, but only that past 
efforts of the kind are not the best examples of 
sober and sound criticism, and scientific inductions 
from known facts ; that the prospect for a just and 
sound naturalistic solution seems very far off ; and 
tliat in the meanwhile, if there is a personal God 
distinct from the known universe, the supernatural 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I47 

solution is the more natural and reasonable ; though, 
if there is no such God, pure naturalism is necessary. 

Naturalism will find another difficulty of the same 
kind in the further addition or rather exposition of 
the conception of Christianity as seen in the Acts 
and the Epistles of the Apostles. If, with Kenan 
and others of his class, we give a low and somewhat 
vulgar exposition of their spirit, yet there still re- 
mains their new views on which they professedly 
acted, and the world-wide sympathies of Paul and 
his party. These were explained by the Apos- 
tles themselves, as the effects of supernatural grace. 
No other solution can we find in their antecedents, 
and all attempts I have ever seen to furnish another 
are crude and vulgar beyond description. 

The standing naturahstic explanation is that, 
though not intellectually distinguished, the Jewish 
race, and the Shemites generally constitute the nat- 
ural religious genius of the world. But this is only 
an assumption, and an assumption of the point in 
debate. It is true in effect that the Jews have de- 
veloped the most rehgious genius of any people, but 
whether that genius is natui'al or supernatural is 
where the opposing parties divide ; and an explana- 
tion which simply assumes this on either side, can of 
course, be of no force with the other side or party. 



14:8 CHBI8TIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCK 

Besides, if they possess a natural religious genius, 
how is it that this naturalistic genius all runs in 
the groove of supernaturalism ? Is it the law of 
nature to contradict herself ? If their genius is nat- 
ural, their supernaturalism is natural in its origin and 
authority, so that nature itself, by its operation and 
effect, teaches supernaturalism. On this assumption, 
therefore, of a natural religious genius, it is surely 
more reasonable to infer that its distinctive and char- 
acteristic deliverances are true than that they are 
false. 

Besides, what is genius and what is its value? 
Genius is an eminent and characteristic power to 
think and to think truly, and to create an enthusiam 
of faith and action.in obedience to its thoughts ? In 
what, then, consists the alleged religious genius of the 
Jew, and what is it worth, if that genius, so called, is 
always misleading and false ? The Jew has shown 
no religious genius, except for supernaturalism and in 
vital connection with supernaturalism ; and if this 
is false, it is absurd to attribute to him a religious 
genius at all. 

If, in accordance with naturalism and its law of 
evolution, we are told this was true for them and 
their times, we reply that it is therefore equally true 
for us Christians and our times ; because we believe 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I49 

it as profoundly, and esteem it as highly as they ever 
did ; and the number of those who thus think and 
feel is steadily increasing as the years and centuries 
succeed each other. 

This response from naturalism or evolution, im- 
plies that the question, what is truth? is only a ques- 
tion of times and places, and subjective differences, 
and this again destroys the significance of the ques- 
tion, for the question is general in its meaning and impli- 
cation, and assumes that there is a general truth, a 
truth that is equally good and authoritative I'elative 
to all. 

But according to evolution and all naturalism, 
this is false. There is no such general and immutable 
truth. Truth varies with men and their times ; and 
it is what appears to them agreable and harmonious. 
All our inquiries about truth are only inquiries as 
to what notions happen to please the inquirer, fee 
called. 

In constructing a theory of the universe under the 
name of philosphy, we are thus only constructing a 
theory that happens to please ourselves, and it is 
good only for us, and for those who happen to be 
pleased with what pleases us ; and it is of no author- 
ity for either us or them, for with the evolution of a 
fresh taste or judgment we are absolved from all prin- 



150 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

ciples wHch. we had previously acknowledged Nat- 
uralistic evolution is thus a Dean Swift's dream of 
Laputa affirmed in sober earnest in the name of 
philosophy. 

Naturalism denies to thought the power to trans- 
cend nature or our natural experience. In so doing 
it is consistent. 

This denial is necessary an|^ fundamental to the 
system. Hence, if this system is true, all supposed 
and alleged supernaturalism, even in thought, is a de- 
lusion. In reality we are all naturalists purely and 
we differ from each other only in that, those of us 
who claim to be supernaturalists do not understand 
ourselves, nor the meaning of our own words. When 
we speak of God as distinct from nature, we simply 
mean nature itself and nature only, because our 
thought cannot transcend nature. When we speak 
of miracles we mean natural sequences, because 
these only are conceivable. Thus a marvelous and 
universal unity in naturalism is demonstrated. 

But this assumes that none but the anti-supernat- 
uralist knows his own thoughts, not a very modest 
assumption, to say the best of it. The issue now 
turns on the question whether the supernaturalists 
are not able to analyze their own consciousness, and 
thus know their own thoughts, or whether the natur- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 151 

alists only are competent to tliis, and whether these 
are also competent to know the thoughts of their op- 
ponents, and to infoi-m the latter what they actnally 
do think. Now, if we do not know what we think 
till they tell us, we cannot know what thej^ tell us ; 
for what they tell us must become our thought in 
order to be known by us, as we cannot know what 
we do not even think. And who is it, pray, that 
denies all thought to all the supernaturalists of the 
including world, its mightiest minds, such as Moses, 
Solomon, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Homer, Plato, Dante, 
Shakespeare, Milton, Descartes, Pascal, Leibnitz, 
Locke, Bacon, Ne\vton ? Who ? Herbert Spencer, 
(and a few others of secondary and temporary dis- 
tinction.) Let us doff our hats to the new mon- 
arch, in token that he is our head and brains ; and 
that we only know this because he has kindly told 
us so. 

If I know my own thoughts, I cannot help wonder- 
ing hoYv^ he knows that we supernaturalists have no 
conception of any supernatural operation ? If he 
has no such conception he does not know what he is 
denying to us, and if he has, then we may have. If 
he and we both have it, then supematuralism is 
demonstrated, according to his own philosphy, be- 
cause this idea transcends natural experience, which 



152 CKBJSTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

he says is tlie only source and measure of thought. 

The reader will not suppose that we are so incon- 
siderate as to think for a moment that all this argu- 
mentation will have any effect on those who have 
made up their minds to scout all supematuralism. 

But we may hope it will be a pleasure if not a tonic 
to those who may read it, and who haye not thus 
made up their minds. We add that though, on the 
Spencerian theory of evolution, the conception of 
supematuralism proves its truth, we consider this 
only an argumentum ad hominem. Thought is not the 
proof and measure of objective reality. 



CHBISTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPERIENCE. I53 



CHAPTER XVII. 

EMPIRICAL OBJECTIONS. 

In conclnding this subject, we wish to make an 
observation and answer some objections, to prevent 
misapprehension. The ideal which ve have sketched 
both Theistic and Christian, is necessarily only in 
outline. It gives the essential spirit and principles 
of the Christian theory ; but it leaves much unsaid, 
and much unexplained. This is a necessity because 
we are finite while the subject is infinite. Every- 
thing that is true must accord with the ideal pre- 
sented. But let us not make the fatal mistake of as- 
suming that we must be able to see this acocrdance. 
That does not follow. On the contrary, it must be 
expected often to pass beyond our comprehension 
in the details. Any other supposition is absurd, 
since we are finite. Difficulties, therefore, in nature 
and revelation are inevitable, now and forever. Prob- 
lems, progressively solved, must introduce others to 
test and develope further power. 



154 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFERIENE. 

Whatever contradicts any truth, or fact must be 
false, because truth is always self-consistent, else 
error and falsehood might be true, which refutes it- 
self, being a contradiction in terms. Hence, if the 
great Conception which we have briefly expounded 
is true as a fact, it must be reconcilable with all ex- 
perience. Yet it may be true, though w^e may not 
be able to show that it is actually so, or so reconciled. 
It is enough if we can show that it may be so recon- 
ciled. If any fact could be clearly shown to be ab- 
solutely incompatible with this Conception, this 
would be invalidated. But that is impossible, be- 
cause we cannot know and compare all possible facts 
and connections and consequences ; and hence we 
cannot know that in the end they will certainly con- 
flict with this Conception. 

We may, however, find facts from which a strong 
inductive inference may be drawn, that they do not 
accord with the existence of an infinitely perfect Be- 
ing. But nearly all inductions, from their very na- 
ture, admit of being reversed, with more or less of 
probability. If it may be so in any of these cases, 
we are not justified in looking only in one direction. 
Besides any induction which accords with a priori 
necessity of so lofty an order as our Supreme Idea 
is infinitely preferable to an induction, however 



CHRISTIAN' CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I55 

strong, in favor of an opposite conclusion. In tlie 
light of these considerations, let us look at some of 
the facts which are judged as opposing the doctrine 
of the existence of an infinite supernatural Being. 

It is alleged that the existence of evil and of na- 
tural contrivances, as a means to an end, indicate that 
the divine power or goodness is limited. If there is 
a Being of infinite goodness, why does He not secure 
perfecu happiness to all his creation ? And if He 
has infinite power, why does He not do this at once, 
and without the aid of means ? We never use 
means for what we can effect by a simple volition. 
These are considerations which have perplexed the 
pious and nourished skepticism in all ages. They 
formed the staple of Job's discussions with his 
friends, or rather they formed the skeleton in the 
dark back-ground which leered upon his holy faith 
all through the period of his fearful trial. They 
have recently received a luminous exposition from 
the trained and gifted mind of John Stuart Mill 

It is to be conceded that induction from expe- 
'rience can never prove the existence of a Being 
of infinite perfection ; because our knowledge 
must always be finite, and the created universe 
and all possible manifestations or the divine attri- 
butes must always be finite. On the basis of ex- 



166 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCK 

perience, therefore, we can never have an adequate 
reason for assuming the infinity of nature's Author, 
if it has an Author. This conclusion will be con 
firmed by the experience of evil and of the operation of 
general law, which secures good only after tedious 
and laborious processes, and by the perpetration of 
much misery. 

But is it not possible to explain these and other 
such facts, as being consistent with the existence of 
an infinitely perfect Being? I think it is. 

Suppose that a higher good is attainable by the 
operation of general law and the evils with which it 
is connected than in any other possible way. Then 
these are not marks of hmitation, but of highest pos-^ 
sible wisdom. To this it is replied that this vindi- 
cates the wisdom and the goodness, but not the 
power of God, and that omnipotence could achieve 
the good without any evil, and without means and 
contrivance. 

This reasoning proceeds on a misconception of the 
meaning and nature of omnipotence. Omnipotence 
is not blind and irrational. It must be suffused with 
infinite wisdom and goodness. As good it must 
achieve the best possible ends. As wise it must 
know these ends, and the logical conditions of their 
attainment. These conditions it cannot disregard. 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE. I57 

It cannot work contradictions. Men demand that 
it shall, and this is the source of all our skepticism 
on the subject. Men demand that God shall make a 
valley without hills, and " a stick without two ends," 
and because He cannot they exclaim about his im- 
potence. Affecting to be wise, they become fools ; 
oblivious of the first and simplest law of thought, 
that our reasoning must be consistent with itself, 
and that still less, if possible, are we entitled to re- 
quire God to commit the folly of which we stand 
self-convicted. 

In accordance with this fundamental error, Mr. 
Mill says that the difficulty must be either in the op- 
position of another being, as the devil, or in the na- 
ture of the materials, or in his inabihty to use them ; 
and that in any case the limitation of his power is 
proved. On the contrary, I take the position that 
the difficulty lies in the nature of the materials, but 
that this does not disprove the divine omnipotence. 

Whatever God creates must be a force, for what- 
ever is, is force (for proof of this see Analytical Pbo- 
*CESSES, Book Second). 

This force must be of some kind or pecuhar na- 
ture. 

According to its nature must be the forms of its 
operation, 



158 CEBISTIAK CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

This operation necessarily constitutes general laws, 
so that general laws are an absolute necessity from 
the essential nature of all existence. God can de- 
stroy them only by annihilating the universe ; and 
then there will remain the necessary laws of his own 
nature. 

Hence difficulties necessarily arise from the nature 
of his materials — difficulties which omnipotence can- 
not destroy without destroying the materials. 

Their existence does not disprove omnipotence. 
Omnipotence is a power to achieve whatever does 
not involve a seK-contradiction ; and such contradic- 
tion is involved in the supposition that any power 
can remove these difficulties without destroying all 
things. 

These forces v/ill necessarily operate differently in 
different connections, for the same reason that, being 
the same, they will operate the same in the same 
connections. 

Consequently, combination or contrivance in ac- 
cordance with their nature and laws is the only way 
by which wise or good ends can be attained. Om- 
nipotence and partipotence are here on a level. It 
is not a question of simple power, but of the wisdom 
of creation, and a wise and comprehensive following 
of the methods which the nature of things necessi- 
tates. 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 159 

That infinite wisdom and goodness have presided 
over the fiat of creation and the processes of its de- 
velopment, we cannot prove from experience. 
Neither can we disprove it. It is possible, and so 
we leave it as the product of the Ideal, whose end is 
only partially attained as yet, but is always advanc- 
ing, and destined to be perfectly satisfactory at last. 

In probable explanation of the existence of evil 
as pain or suffering, we are entitled to the possible 
supposition that infinite wisdom saw that the crea- 
tion of the universe on a plan which admits this to 
a certain extent is better than any conceivable sys- 
tem which should absolutely exclude it. This does 
not exalt the di^dne goodness at the expense of his 
power, as Mr. Mill affirms. It only supposes that 
Infinity cannot work self-contradictions, that He 
cannot create beings without qualities or forces ; 
that He cannot make them be and not be at the 
same time, and cannot make each or any force act 
contrary to its intrinsic and total nature. Such a 
power as this would destroy all certainty and reahty, 
and confound all thought and reasoning. 

In prosecuting our effort at a possible reconcilia- 
tion of the facts of experience with the reality of our 
Ideal Conception, we are also entitled to the suppo- 
sition that the universe is constructed on the scheme 



160 GHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCK 

of intellectual and moral probation and progress, 
with liability to sin and suffering, and that this in the 
issue will bring good out of evil, and in spite of evil, 
and partly by its help will be productive of a felicity 
and nobility of character which were otherwise im- 
possible, and which will more than compensate on 
the whole for any evil that may attend it. This sup- 
position grows out of the Ideal, since the Infinite 
must be conceived as thus acting. It does not, 
therefore, impeach his omnipotence. It is self-con- 
tradictory to suppose that there can be certain men- 
tal and moral qualities without trial and temptation, 
and consequent liability to error and sin ; and to 
achieve such prodigies as these does not belong to 
omnipotence. 

We here call attention also to what we have already 
considered, that a capacity for pleasure is also of logical 
necessity a capacity for pain ; and that where there 
is a violation of the law of pleasure, the law of pain 
necessarily operates. How far the latter may be made 
to contribute to the former in the eternal ages of the 
universe of God we are no adequate judges, and so 
cannot gainsay the supposition that the existing or- 
der, taken altogether and in all its connections, is 
the best possible system of things, the best even to 
omnipotence, combined with infinite wisdom an 
goodness. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION A2W EXPEBIENGE. 161 

It is puerile to mention the low forms of life in 
some tribes of men as an objection to tbe perfection 
of God. It is no better than to ask why God did not 
make us all Newtons? "We might then ask why- 
Newton was not made a Gabriel or Lucifer, and why 
these were not made indefinitely higher, and so on 
forever. It is reasonable that there should be grades, 
and it is absurd to suggest where these should begin 
or end, when the range is without limit, and all de- 
grees are only relatively great or small. 



162 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 



CHAPTER XVIIL 

INTUITION ; OR, SUBJECTIVE INFLUENCE. 

In these days there is a mighty cry : " Great is In- 
tuition, or Insight." Grive ns this, they say, and we 
shall take a bee-line with lightning speed for all that 
is true and good. Then we can dispense with the 
syllogism and all the machinery of evidences and ar- 
gumentation. This is the song of Ralph Waldo Em- 
erson and the Boston transcendentalists. We fer- 
vently join with them in the praise of intuition. But 
there are various forms of intuition. There is a logi- 
cal and philosophical, as well as a poetic intuition ; 
and there is a spiritual intuition which eyes the su- 
pernatural, as well as a sensible intuition, which dis- 
cerns only '' Nature." 

It is to this higher intuition that we make our ap- 
peal, striving to develop it into nobler action and 
proportions by presenting to it the noblest of objects. 
We have made no reference to the miracles and tes- 
timony of past ages, though we consider that these 



CHRISTIAN CONGEFTION AND EXPERIENCE. 163 

have a significance and authority. Our pnilosopliy 
and argument are, we conceive, born directly of the 
loftiest and serenest insight, and only this can discern 
our Supreme Idea. 

We also hold that this same intuition has a certain 
quality or faculty of voluntariness. Like those aquat- 
ic animals, it can at will surround itself with a cloud 
of inky blackness, so that it can neither see nor be 
seen. Every man, to a degree, is lord of his own in- 
tuition, which is almost as changeful as Proteus, and 
for similar reasons, and is often most blank relative 
to its own character. Men of equal powers may be 
unequal in their action. High faculty may be vol- 
untarily unemployed. With truth before them, men 
of intuitive power are not necessitated to see and ac- 
cept ber. The final determination rests with them. 
They make their own right or wrong. Their prefer- 
ence controls their mental action and habit, and 
shapes and guides their perceptions. Their world is 
chiefly of their own creation, and their judgments re- 
specting that world own the will of their subject for 
their master. We are thus responsible for our views, 
our doubts and our faith. Our own dispositicm and 
inclination, our own self -chosen or self-cultured bias, 
can always make the worse appear the better reason. 
Objective realities appear different as our subjective 



164 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

state changes. Ideas take on the hues of our own minds, 
and without any variation things appear sable or sun- 
bright, according as is the mind that contemplates 
them. T7e all remember how differently we have 
been affected by the same truths and the same events 
at different times and on different occasions in our 
lives. The outer object or the real truth of things is 
nothing to us unless we have the faculty of true in- 
sight. It is supremely from this cause that the glory 
and the truth of the great Christian doctrines are ob- 
scured to the minds of so many alike in the upper 
and the lower intellectual planes. 

We know all this both from our own experience 
and from observation in every direction. We can 

never forget how obscure some of the most vital 
teachings of the New Testament appeared to us be- 
fore we received that divine illumination and spir- 
tual renovation which we call the new birth. In their 
experience of our skeptical friend, we have seen this 
truth exemplified in a more specific and striking form 
than usual, just as his conversion was effected by a 
more distinctly intellectual agency than usual. The 
claims of the Supreme Idea, which ultimately exer- 
cised a decisive influence upon him, he at first ener- 
getically repudiated. As he drew nearer in spirit to 
the Saviour, his opposition grew less intense, less 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 165 

thorough, decided and confident, till at last he yield- 
ed to it as a reasonable ground for prayer and for a 
life in consonance with the Christian ideas. After he 
was converted, it became as clear as sunlight. All the 
obscurities and apparent errors of the Christian sys- 
tem disappeared, and the essential points of that sys- 
tem became as clear as the most familiar truths of his 
childhood. I had feared that there would be many 
things in our doctrinal system of first importance 
which he would hesitate to accept even after his con- 
version. But his new spiritual intelligence at once 
embraced every vital truth of the Christian economy. 
Intellect and heart were one — clarified, purified, ex- 
alted, happy. 

The writers of the Bible sometimes express this 
idea with paradoxical enei^. Such a sentence is 
that of Jesus to Thomas: " Because thou hast seen 
me thou hast believed ; blessed are they that have 
not seen, and yet have believed." A cultivated 
mind, little acquainted with Jesus, hearing this 
would perhaps imagine that Jesus meant to repress 
rational investigation, and to require a faith without 
evidence, and that therefore all his votaries are to be 
despised as mental addlings, whose faith is the mea- 
sure of their lack of brains. 

There has always been men who have looked upon 



166 CHRISJIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFERIENCR 

Christianity as a system of religion wHch requires 
belief without knowledge, which smiles on credence 
and frowns on intelligence, anc? who have, therefore, 
treated it and its adherents with neglect and con- 
tempt, as injurious to the development and pro- 
gress of the best powers and interests of men. Their 
view of Christianity is partial and false, and prevents 
them from seeking and securing those blessings 
which Christ offers to all who receive him. 

For the view they take they have a reason in the 
opinions and actions of many of the professed ad- 
herents of Christj who do actually consider such 
passages as this to be an encouragement of faith at 
the expense of knowledge : and they think that the 
energy of intellectual inquiries should be systema- 
tically suppressed, or at least indulged only in very 
rigid subjection to the supposed demands of the 
faith. 

We need not say that we consider this an utter 
perversion of the spirit of Christianity. Christ does, 
indeed, demand implicit faith and unquestioning 
faith, but not a blind faith. A bhnd faith has noth- 
ing to guide it in the right track, and to it error will 
be as welcome and as forceful as truth. Christ 
claims credence and allegiance on the ground that 
he is the Ught of the world ; and that, therefore, all 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 167 

ought to recognize his character as readily as 
they recognize the sunlight. It is on this ac- 
count that Thomas ought not to have needed the 
sensible evidence which he sought, and that they 
are nobler who are able to believe without that evi- 
dence, because of their spiritual intuition. 

Thomas had very little of this higher insight. 
He was not distinctively a skeptic through fertihty of 
thought in wrong directions. On the contrary, he be- 
longed to the positive and impulsive order of minds ; 
of strong and generous feelings, but of sluggish in- 
tellect, working snail-like on the earth, not bird-like 
in the air. Hence the uncomprehended death of 
Jesus had destroyed his faith and all the power of 
the glorious truth which Jesus had taught, and the 
still grander spirit which Jesus had displayed. 
Thomas is the antipodes of John, who apparently 
never faltered in his faith in Jesus as the Christ, 
because of a deeper insight into his character and 
the spirit of his teachings. 

Moral and spiritual truth is itself a light, and, 
therefore, it carries with it its own evidence to 
every right mind. It needs no voucher from either 
miracle or testimony, except to the blind. Only 
the blind ask for testimony, or other indirect evi- 
dence that the sun shines. It is not for this sane 



168 CHRISTIAN COXCEFTION AND EXPEBIENGE. 

men use burning glasses. Hence Paul spoke of 
manifesting the truth to every man's conscience by 
the simple preaching or proclamation of it, with- 
out the aid of miracles ; afllrming that if the Gos- 
pel is hid to any, it is because they are blinded by 
the god of this world, while believers are convinced, 
not because of sensible evidences, but because God 
has shone into their hearts to give the light of the 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
Jesus Christ, just as he commanded Hght to 
shine out of darkness. Hence, whoever hears 
the Gospel, is commanded to receive it on pain 
of damnation. They are not exempt from obli- 
gation to beheve, till they have had time to 
examine the miracles and prophesies in proof 
of the Gospel. The Gospel is its own proof; 
and whoever refuses to embrace it, has shut his 
heart against the light of heaven. He is a moral 
and spiritual imbecile ; and however he may boast 
his " science " and his " culture," the highest science 
and culture are not his. He lacks the loftiest form 
of intuition and insight. 

Superiority of mind is disclosed by being the first 
to discover great truths and general laws, and next 
by the most ready comprehension of them when ex- 
pounded or stated. Some of the great mathematical 



CHRISTIAN C02WEPTI0N AND EXFERIENCK 169 

minds have read right through large portions of 
Euclid, comprehending the problems and tlieorems 
at a glance without any help from tlie demonstrations 
furnished in the book ; while others have found the 
answers to tlie former only by a laborious study of 
the latter; and there are still others who cannot un- 
derstand even the latter. Here the last class are ac- 
counted the dullest, and the first the brightest. This 
standard is reversed by many in judging of talent ia 
regard to religion. Those wbo confess that they can 
discern and understand nothing, claim on that very 
ground to be considered the ablest and wisest; a 
claim which is about as rational as if the blind and 
deaf should claim to know more than others because 
they can neither see nor hear. The developed and 
disciplined intellect is marked by a positive power, 
not merely or chiefly by a negative impotency. For 
a man to confess that everything to him is dark, is 
merely a confession of his blindness, not a proof that 
there is no light to any other man. 

It is by a superior exhibition of tbis positive power 
that the kings of science have won their crowns. 
Copernicus first conceived the theory of the solar 
system which takes his name, and the genius which 
conceived it knew how to unfold the proofs to his 
own satisfaction ; but inferior minds could not so 



170 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCE. 

easily compreliend eitter tlie theory or its proofs, 
and it required a generation or two before what he 
saw so clearly and proved so well, was generally ac- 
cepted. Newton's discovery and proof of the law of 
gravitation exemplifies in like manner the action of 
genius compared with inferior minds. In all cases 
the palm of honor is awarded to the exhibition of 
positive power. Negatives prove nothing except in 
capacity and moral debasement, and the lower a man 
descends the more unconscious is he of his degrada- 
tion. Simon Magus thought the apostolic powers in 
conferring the Holy Ghost only a higher art than 
his own, and complacently offered money to obtain 
it. The moral conception of the case had not 
dawned on his mind. However gifted in some re- 
spects, he was evidently far inferior in the highest of 
all qualities, moral intuition and earnestness, to 
those around him who were rejoicing in the moral 
and spiritual salvation by Christ, and he knew not 
that he was blind while they beheld the hght. A 
Hindoo physician, a man of culture, after the style 
of his country, undertook, for the peace of his con- 
science, a lengthy pilgrimage, marking and measur- 
ing his progress by the lengths of his body on the 
ground. His weary toil excited the attention and 
pity of a missionary, who exhibited to him a picture 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCK YJ\ 

of Jesus on the cross, and explained the Gospel. 
Then the man arose, saying that Jesus was the Sa- 
viour he wanted, and his heart received the believer's 
peace and joy. Did not this instantaneous faith ex- 
hibit a far keener and loftier power of moral percep- 
tion and earnestness than if for his conviction he had 
required a course of reading on the miracles and 
prophesies, and all the tedious array of historic and 
critical evidences ? All rationalism will answer yes. 
Blessed are they who, though they have not seen all 
these proofs, have believed and known the truth as 
it is in Jesus. It is thus that many, who are limited 
in literary and scientific and philosophical attain- 
ments, may exercise a grade of power which in dig- 
nity and worth far transcends the genius of Spencer 
and Darwin, and all their anti-Christian followers. 



BOOK SECOND. 



SUPEMATURAL EXPERIENCE. 



Christian Conception and Experience. 



BOOK SECOND.— THE EXPEEIENCE. 



CHAPTEE I. 



A PROPOSED ARGUMENT FROM RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 

If the Supernatural Ideal is true it will, when be- 
lieved and acted on, be productive of gu peculiar life 
and experience in verification of its truth. We have 
seen this exemplified in the case of our skeptical 
friend. We propose now to extend this idea, and 
from a mde induction form an argument which shall 
be strictly scientific, based on the Christian Con- 
sciousness or Experience. This will be an argument 
which is more on a level with the average mind, 
and will appeal to it with greater force than that on 
the Supernatural Ideal or the Supreme Idea. 

Those who are true to their highest conceptions 
will attain a corresponding experience. Experience 
is the inevitable attendant on thought and ' action ; 

(175) 



176 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

and as determined by them it takes from them its 
character. There is therefore a natural experience 
which arises from Christian faith. But according to 
the Scriptures there is also a supernatural power and 
experience wrought in all who truly give themselves 
up to Christ. Whether this is so is a question which 
is to be determined by consciousness and testimony 
and critical observation. Then whether we can 
make any legitimate use of the facts thus ascertained 
in support of the supernatural claims of Christianity, 
is a question for philosophical consideration. 

The latter question has never been seriously con- 
sidered. Among themselves and in popular dis- 
course Christians have often drawn an effective ar- 
gument from a special spiritual experience. Among 
'^the people called Methodists" especially, this has 
been a frequent appeal of great power in their ad- 
dresses to the unconverted. Living or dying, this 
testimony of an earnest and a foretaste of heaven, 
consistently supported, cannot fail to have great 
force in attracting the people to religion. 

Very many people who adopt the Christian creed 
Icnow nothing of such an experience, and they deny that 
there is any such in this world, or that it is for any 
but a very few of the most exalted saints. They look 
upon these alleged experiences as examples of enthu- 



CHBI8TIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I77 

siasm or fanaticism ; and they consider that these, so 
far from being an argument in favor of religion, are 
hindrances to its success. 

Vast numbers, however, of the best and ablest men 
of the church have held to the existence of a dis- 
tinctively Christian experience. They hold that re- 
ligion is a life, and that this life must have its inter- 
nal as well as its external manifestations. This is 
indisputable. Exactly how this is manifested, 
whether it is purely natural or whether it is also su- 
pernatural, and if the latter, how and by what tokens 
it is to be discriminated from what is merely natural, 
are questions which require attention. Thoughtful 
Christians have, no doubt, often had their attention 
arrested by this question. They have seen nature in 
their religious experience, and they have seen God; 
but, perhaps, they could go no further. They could 
not delineate the two in clear discrimati(m from each 
other ; much less could they see how to bring their 
supernatural experiences forth into indisputable re- 
cognition and erect upon them an argument for relig- 
ion which shall be as regular and as clearly scientific 
as any of the recognized inductions of physical and 
social science. They have therefore been content 
to affirm the consciousness of a supernatural experi- 
ence for their own comfort and spiritual incitement, 



178 CHRISTIAN CONCEFTION A2W EXFEEIENCE. 

and for the spiritual benefit of all who were prepared 
to accept their testimony. This is the history of 
the more spiritual part of the Christian church on 
this subject. Here the ablest divines and their hum- 
blest hearers or readers have been apparently on a 
level. A scientific argument on the basis of experi- 
ence has never been developed, nor, so far as I am 
aware, has it ev^r been attempted. 

On the contrary, there is even yet a prevalent as- 
sumption that such an argument is impossible, and 
that to attempt it would be unwise because futile, 
Tn some minds there is a prejudice against applying 
the rigid methods of science to reUgion, as if religion 
itseK would be debased by being found in alliance 
with science, and supported by science. The scientific 
unbehevers, on the other hand, smile at the idea of 
a scientific argument based on a special and super- 
natural experience, and they expect it will work just 
as the Greek fire would operate among the Greeks 
themselves, if it were handled by apes. 

As to the fact of the supernatural experience, I 
shall affirm nothing but what is uniformly affirmed by 
all denominations of Christian people, whether Papal 
or Protestant — nothing but what is attested as a veri- 
fied doctrine in all sections of the common Church, 
which receives the Bible as a supernatural revelation. 



CKRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I79 

We are fighting the battle of Christian faith, and 
therefore we stand on the common foundation, and 
use no weapons which are not approved by the en- 
tire Christian fraternity as believers in the supernat- 
uralism of the Scriptures. "With, this limitation, or 
rather, to view it on the other side, on this broad 
foundation, I am of the opinion that it is possible, 
on the basis of an attested uniform Christian expe- 
rience, to construct an argument of the most scien- 
tific character, and the most cogent force. 

There is surely no obvious and intrinsic absurdity 
in such an opinion; and an honest attempt to prove 
it ought not to be condemned in advance. The 
unbelieving philosopher, if he is a philosopher indeed, 
can do no less than to hsten respectfully and with a 
spirit of serious inquiry, to the attested experience 
of so vast a number of witnesses as those which 
compose the living forces of the entu^e Christian 
church of all civilized ages and countries, compris- 
ing a very vast proportion of the most gifted, the 
most cultured, and the most eminent in moral and 
spiritual attainments in the world, as well as the 
simple and unsophisticated people who have verified 
the doctrine of the universal church. 

Nor ought we to be daunted by the denial of all 
supernatural experience with which unbelievers will 



180 CHRISTIAN aOM^FFTION AND EXPEHIENCE, 

endeavor to forestal our argument. Of course, such 
experience is unknown to tliem, just because they 
are unbeheyers v/ho do not conform to the conditions 
on the fulfihnent of which the experience ensues. It 
is implied in our doctrine and argument, that they 
are strangers to the alleged spiritual and supernat- 
ural experience. They are entitled to speak for them- 
selves, but not for believers. On the other hand, 
believers also may speak for themselves, which they 
do, and they do nothing more, and their testimony is 
positive and uniform, as we shall show ; and from 
this uniformity of testimony of vast extent and du- 
ration, and including an innumerable multitude of 
witnesses of every grade of talent and culture, and 
from every walk of society, we shall show that there 
is a strong scientific foundation for the inference that 
their view is true. 

Those who have no such experience, whether infi- 
dels or not, cannot, of course, anticipate any success 
to such an eflfort But, on the other hand their want 
of such an experience is no proof that it is impossi- 
ble or that nobody else is the subject of it. They are 
to be counted out as of only negative force. I shall 
not have their sympathy nor their testimony, that is 
all. 

The experience of which I speak must follow a 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 181 

uniform law of acquisition and retention and loss, 
in order that it may be calculated and anticipated, 
and its causal connections determined. Conse- 
quently no one must be the subject of this experience, 
except those who have fulfilled or conformed to this 
law, while all who do conform to the law must be 
its subject. This just rule clears our track of all 
merely nominal and faithless Christians who disre- 
gard the Christian law, or who obserre it so imper- 
fectly, that the Christian consciousness cannot, ac- 
cording to Scripture, be unequivocally developed. 
This law must also at the same time be shown to be, 
not a natural, but a supernatural law, by its devia- 
tions from the kaown natural order on the topic 
considered. 



182 CHRISTIA]^ CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCE. 



CHAPTEE n. 



CAUTIONS AND DISTINCTIONS. 



I ALLOW that we should be careful not to make a 
parade of science in support of religion. But it is 
quite a fashion now to make a parade of science in 
support of irrehgion ; and here it is often the parade 
which wields the chief influence with some people 
and a Httle parade of science on the other side 
of the question may be necessary to convince that 
class that anything can be said on this side. 

I would not have any one suppose that I mean to 
insinuate, by anything I have said, that the method 
by which Christianity has been usually supported 
by its best advocates is not truly scientifice It is, 
and has always been so, though not so denominated. 
Religion has been put beyond the pale of science ; 
and in these days the most elaborate efforts of some 
philosophers are directed toward the perpetual ex- 
clusion of religion from the rank of a science. Even 
divines have generally acquiessed in this, and so 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEHIENCE, 183 

such phrases ''as science and rehgion," with the im- 
phcation that the latter is not included in the former, 
show that this exclusion of religion from the rank of 
science is stamped upon our language. 

A distinction is to be made between the science 
of religion and the practice of rehgion, a distinction 
of much importance every way. The science of re- 
ligion is the exposition and defense of its principles 
and prescribed methods ; while the practice of re- 
ligion comprises all thought and action in accordance 
with these principles and methods. When the word 
rehgion is used, as it generally is, to designate the 
practice of it in our life and worship, it does not de- 
note a science ; and it is this use of the word that 
has facihtated the entire exclusion of rehgion from 
the acknowledged circle of the sciences. But it 
would be just as reasonable to exclude physiology 
or psychology from the circle of the sciences ; for 
here there is the same distinction between the prac- 
tice and the science. In our physical and mental 
life we exemplify the principles of physiology and 
psychology, while the sciences are the knowledge 
and the exposition of these principles. In the science 
of the Christian rehgion we reckon systematic the- 
ology, pastoral theology, homiletics, the principles 
of exegesis, the evidences, internal and external. 



184 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

These should all be scientific, and so far as they are 
of value, they are so. In their development and 
exposition we follow the same methods of investiga- 
tion that are followed in the physical sciences — ^in- 
duction aided by deduction wherever this is possible. 
There are no methods of reasoning and investiga- 
tion other than these : no other is possible any- 
where. Nowhere in all the range of the acknowl- 
edged sciences has the method of induction been 
more rigorously appHed and more beautifully exem- 
plified than in the science of the Christian reUgion, 
in all its departments. It would be a grea-t pleas- 
ure to show this with some detail, but I forbear now, 
though I may do it some time. 

We ought also to notice and bear in mind the 
distinction between conscious and unconscious 
science, or between reflective and unreflective or 
spontaneous science. The beginning of what is 
called science is not the beginning of the scientific 
process. The latter is coeval with intelligence. 
Men were logicians before Aristotle analyzed the 
logical process, and they practised induction before 
Bacon conceived his Novum Organum, Men do 
both to-day with almost perfect accuracy and reach 
just conclusions, though it never occurs to theni 
that they are exmphfying the methods of scienc , 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 185 

and while they know nothing whatever of science. 

I cannot better illustrate this than by quoting from 

(a Macaul^y's essay on Bacon the following passage : 

^* A plain man finds his stomach out of order. He 
never heard Lord Bacon's name. But he proceeds 
in the strictest conformity with the rules laid down 
in the second book of the "Novum Organum", and 
satisfies himseK that minced pies have done the 
mischief. ^I ate minced pies on Monday and Wednes- 
day, and I was kept awake by indigestion all night.' 
This is the comparentia ad intellechim instantiarum 
convenientium. ^1 did not eat any on Tuesday and 
Friday, and I was quite well.' This is the comparen- 
tia instantiarum in proximo quce natura data pri- 
vantur, ' I ate very sparingly of them on Sunday, 
and was very shghtly indisposed in the evening. 
But on Christmas day I almost dined on them, and 
was so ill that I was in some danger.' This is the 
comparentia instantiarum secundum magis et minus. 
* It cannot have been the brandy which I took with 
them, for I have drunk brandy daily for years, with- 
out being the worse for it.' This is the rejectio not- 
urarum. Our invahd then proceeds to what is 
termed by Bacon the Yindemiatio, and pronoimces 
that mince pies do not agree with him." 

In rehgion there is a grand scope for this spon- 



186 CERI8TIAN CONCEPTION AND hXPEEIENCE. 

taneous science. Here every one has to judge for 
himself, and is held responsible for his choice. He 
must choose right, or he must be condemned. But 
he cannot investigate all the evidences. Not one in 
a million is competent to this. The Gospel demands 
acceptance from all on its first presentation. The 
Scriptures therefore assume that they carry their 
own evidence with them, either in themselves or in 
the living Church which propagates them, or in both 
ways. There must be a reason which all can under- 
stand and appreciate, though they may not be able 
to expound and elucidate it ; and which will bear 
investigation, and prove its claim to be truly scien- 
tific. This is the argument from the experience of 
the Church verifying the promises of the Bible. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEUIENCK 187 



CHAPTER III 

SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 

Modern science is characterized by beginning its 
operations with experience, and sticking well to it. 
This it sifts and analyzes, and carefully determines its 
factors and elements, and its causal connections. 
Then it accepts it without any further question, and 
its logical implications, of course go with it. 

By experience it discovers a regular and orderly 
connection of things, which constitute the world or 
the universe. By the observed uniformity of things, 
in the order of their succession, it determines relative 
causes and effects, and is able to anticipate certain 
coming events. Any event which uniformly follows 
another is pronounced to be caused by that other, and 
so from the knowledge of either we may generally or 
always predict the other. 

This is the way the human mind always reasons 
in every stage of its development. The burnt child 
infers that the painful sensation which he feels is 



188 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCK 

caused by the connection of his hand with the flame ; 
and having seen certain effects of a falling body, he 
will anticipate them on any like occasion. The sav- 
age reasons on this principle as confidently and as 
intelligently within his range as the philosopher does 
within his broader range. Science is thus the exer- 
cise of our natural powers of observation and in- 
ference, and the same method ; only this method is 
enlarged and purified and guarded against aberrations, 
to which ignorant and undisciplined minds are ex- 
posed. 

But all experience or observation raises questions 
which transcend experience. In every stage of de- 
velopment the human mind spontaneously and nec- 
essarily asks the question, ^'whence come these 
phenomena of our experience, and why do they act so 
and so, and maintain their relations to each other as 
found in our experience ? " In other words, we in- 
quire for a cause of all these phenomena. We affirm 
or assume that our experience is not tlie ultimatum 
of thought and existence, that implies a force of 
which these phenomena are manifestations. 

A very few men in modern times, like Mr. Comte 
and John Stuart Mill, have endeavored to quash 
these questions as illegitimate and unmeaning. They 
have demanded that all our inquiries shall stop with 



CHRISTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPEBIENCK 189 

experience and be content with, it They might as 
well demand that the birdling shall be content in its 
shell or that the transformed caterpiller shall be con- 
tent with its chrysalis form and condition. Neither 
Comte nor Mill were able to so restrict their own 
minds, as seen in Comte's religious appendix to his 
philosophy, and in Mill's '* Essays on Eeligion." 
Accordingly, this restriction finds small sanction 
among the scientists of the age. Nearly all physical 
investigators affirm, and all assume, that all known 
things or phenomena imply a force of which they are 
the effects and manifestations. This is incorporated 
by Mr. Spencer into the theory of evolution as one of 
its fundamental elements. 

Here we call attention to an unrecognized logical 
consequence of the method of determining natural 
causes. It is this : If known uniformity is proof of 
a natural cause, then known violation of uniformity 
is proof of a cause which is not natural or which is 
supernatural. Observe, we do not here afiirm any 
known violation of the law of uniformity, but only 
that as this law determines for us what is the natural 
cause of any event, it follows by strict logical neces- 
sity that if we should find any case of an event which 
occurs to our certain knowledge contrary to the 
known order of events we should have proof that it 



190 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIhNCK 

does not occur by the force of nature, and therefore, 
that it is the effect of a supernatural force. This is 
part of the essential principle of modern science, a 
part, however, which it neglects, because it properly 
belongs to the theological science ; but that is no rea- 
son why other sciences should deny it, as it only 
shows their incomprehension of their own essential 
principle. If therefore we do find a class of phenom- 
ena which do not conform to natural law we shall 
on this principle be compelled to assign to them a 
supernatural cause. 

So far as it goes, this brief statement forms an ex- 
position of the main principles and method of modern 
science, and of the philosophy which most clearly 
allies itself with physical science, together with its 
converse logical implication. With this method, we 
have no quarrel. It is the method to which the 
Church must conform, and to which we believe, it 
has always conformed in the study and support of 
the Christian religion, and that by this it is a science. 

Now, if in perfect conformity with this method we 
can show an experience based on Scripture which 
cannot be explained except by the induction of a su- 
pernatural cause, and of the supernatural origin and 
authority of the Scriptures, we shall furnish a scien- 
tific proof of these doctrines, and bring the Christian 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 191 

Evidences within the pale of science. This, we 
think, can be easily done, without recurrence to the 
alleged historical miracles. 



192 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENGK 



CHAPTEE IV. 



NATURAL LAW OF FAITH. 



Like every thing else faith has many laws. But it 
is not our object to expound all these, but only one 
of them. 

This one is the law of its influence or its law as a 
cause, and even this we propose here to consider 
only partially and so far as it relates directly to our 
argument as a contrast to the Christian law of 
faith. 

Natural faith affects the mind in which it operates 
according to the nature of the idea beUeved. Pleas- 
ant or unpleasant ideas will be productive of feelings 
corresponding with them ; and thus the gloom or the 
brightness of our daily life, is the effect of our dom- 
inant daily beliefs. 

All beUef naturally helps to fulfill itself. Whoever 
expects to fail in business or any special enterprise, 
will be likely to do so. The belief will probably en- 
gender a style and course of conduct, which makes 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. I93 

failure inevitable. Napoleon's faith in his predes- 
tinated successes, and Wallenstein's favorable prog- 
nostications of the stars, inspired cheer and courage 
and effective energy of intellect and will, into both 
themselves and their adherents. It was because in 
the darkest hour of her history, Fabius did not despair 
of the Republic that he became her military saviour. 

The power of a behef does not depend on the 
truth of the thought or sentiment beheved. It be- 
longs equally to faiths that are founded on truth and 
error. This is a necessity because the effect is sub- 
jective, and is the effect of the faith as such. It 
has always the same effect as if it were true, because 
it is received and acted on as true. An erroneous 
behef can kill and make aUve. It may affect the 
spirits so as to destroy vitahty, or restore it when 
apparently fled. It has alternately infused coward- 
ice and courage into armies. The prisoner has 
been made happy in his cell by a false assurance of 
a coming pardon, while a false alarm has brought 
misery and ruin to its victims. 

But faith does not always fulfill itseK. History 
has no longer or sadder chapter than that on the 
vanity of human hopes and expectations ; while the 
happy or the comical disappointments of dark fore- 
bodings form a supplement of corresponding propor- 



194 CEBTSTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPERIENE. 

tions. The fulfillment of a belief depends on its 
basis in fact, on its subject and the connections of 
events ; so that its fulfillment is as uncertain and as 
variable as human temperaments and circumstances ; 
and this is the only law of their fulfillment. 

Nofait\ true or falser always naturallg produces 
the effect it seeks or expects. 

Everywhere and in every direction we find the 
faith of men doomed to disappointment, and their 
forebodings are often happily unfilled. There is in 
the result of the recognized natural faiths no uni- 
formity. He who expects a crown finds a poniard 
, or a scafi'old or a dungeon. The invalid dies in the 
belief that he is convalescent ; while the hypocon- 
driac, the victim of a thousand anticipated mortal ills, 
lives on in spite of all, and perhaps by their help. 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCE. I95 



CHAPTEE V. 

CHBISTIAN LAW OF FAITH. 

Keligion, like science, begins with experience. It 
cannot begin without this nor with anything else 
than this. We can have nothing and can know 
nothing which is not an experience. All supposed 
revelations of God and all communications of his 
grace must come to us in the form of experience, 
and this must, therefore, be at the foundation of re- 
ligion, as well as of science. Hence the rehgion of 
the Bible has always made much of experience ; and 
it is full of the experiences of the saints, and of 
sinners too. The same is true of the more spiritual 
portion of the modern Church. It affirms that all 
Christians are the subjects of a special and peculiar 
experience, and by this, therefore, it in a measure 
judges them. At all events, it always in some way 
builds on experience as its primary synthetical foun- 
dation. 

It is by experience that the Scriptures are known, 



196 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERmNCK 

for the Bible as a book is an object of sense, uni- 
form, and verifiable, and all may know it in like nat- 
ural conditions. 

Bj experience, sensible and uniform and verifia- 
ble in its primary form, the contents or the teach- 
ings of the Scriptures are known. It is only in the 
interpretation of these contents that differences begin, 
and here there are grand salient points of universal 
agreement. It is thus agreed that they teach that 
the sinner must repent as a condition of pardon, that 
if he repent and turn to God in the name of the I^ord 
Jesus Christ the love of God shall be shed abroad in 
his heart as a token of mercy, and he shall also re- 
ceive the power of a new and holy life. 

By experience we discover a regular and uniform 
connection between the fulfilment of the requisitions 
and the fulfilment of the promises. " Uncontra- 
dicted experience " of uniformity of connection in the 
Older of time between phenomena is the highest evi- 
dence that Mill, Spencer or Bain can conceive of cau- 
sal connection. This evidence we have in proof of 
the causal connection between repentance and faith 
and a peculiar spiritual experience and power which 
the prayer of faith sought in accordance with the 
promise of Scripture. The book of the Acts of the 
Apostles gives numerous examples of this connection 
as the law of spiritual life. 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 197 

But this analysis is not ultimate, and this connec- 
tion implies an ulterior cause. The faith in question 
looks beyond itself to God as the operator or cause 
of the solicited new experience. It does this in con- 
formity with the Bible, which affirms that God always 
does this work in answer to such faith and prayer. 
By the uniformity of the verification of this declara- 
tion of the Bible contrary to the law of natural faith 
we have a scientific proof that the Bible is true, that 
the result is the eflfect of our faith only secondarily, 
and of God's supernatural power really and ulti- 
mately. 

If the prayer of faith itself is the exclusive and ul- 
timate cause of the new experience, then this prayer 
is an error. It assumes that itself is not the only 
cause, that it is only one of the necessary antece- 
dents, and that the supernatural operation or volition 
of God is another of these antecedents. To ascribe 
the result to only one of these antecedents is to say 
that praying faith is a delusion and yet that it is 
mighty to save. Thus tlie weakness of error is made 
the mightiest and the most marvelous of all known 
moral forces. This is suicidal. 

We have seen that the natural law of faith does not 
secure a uniform fulfilment of the faith, and that the 
failures are extremely numerous, so numerous that we 



198 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

hardly ever prognosticate a man's success or defeat 
merely on the strength of his faith. But this is just 
what Christianity does. It is to faith pure and 
simple that salvation and a new life are offered, and 
we predict the latter as a certain and uniform conse- 
quence of the former. The publican going down to 
his house justified is the type of all Avithout excep- 
tion. All temperaments, all ages, and all degrees 
of culture, in all times and chmes, without a single 
unmistakable exception, have experienced in some 
degree a new joy and a new life as the result of such 
a prayer. This surely cannot be explained by any 
known natural law. It must be referred to a super- 
natural power as its cause. 

WiU it be argued that this uniformity is the oper- 
ation of a psychological law, according to which re- 
pentance of sin and faith in God's mercy necessarily 
generate happiness and moral power ? That there 
is such a" psychological law is beyond question. 
But it is a law of partial and hmited operation and 
force, according as is the moral power and character 
of the individual. The purpose and expectation to 
live a better life does not always secure it, and re- 
pentance without faith in Christ, often calls for pen- 
ance and gives no comfort whatever, but fills the 
mind with gloomy and depressing fears. This has 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 199 

been the bitter experience of very many who have 
afterward become the happy subjects of sa^dng grace. 
They have again and again resolved and hoped 
to be better, but they have still found that they re- 
mained substantially imchanged ; till finally, looking 
unto Jesus, they have become the subjects of new 
tastes, new motives, hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, aver- 
sions and attachments, and new power over tempta- 
tion 

It is true that Christians often fail, that their 
prayers and efforts and hopes are often partially 
unavailing against their besetting sins. But I have 
not said that they can be made perfect in a moment, 
or that prayer for this or that, for any and every- 
thing, is answered at once. I have said that men 
uniformly become the subject of a new experience 
and a new life, though repentance toward God and 
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, (which may yet leave 
much to be done.) This, I repeat, is the uncontra- 
dicted experience of the Church, an^ the teachings 
of the Scriptures ; and we argue that the uniformity 
of this experience, verifying the promises of Scrip- 
ture, is a scientific guarantee of the truth of Scrip- 
ture declarations, that the cause of this change in 
the penitent behever, is the supernatural agency of 
the Spirit of God. The Bible being found to be 



200 CHBI8TIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCK 

true, in its declaration of tlie nniform connection of 
repentance and faith with the new life, we have 
every reason for beUeving it to be true in its declar- 
ration, that the cause of the new life is the super- 
natural agency of God. 

Now as we find that repentance toward God and 
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, exercised in praye 
for a new spiritual experience and power, are uni- 
formly followed by this solicited experience and 
power, philosophy and science are stultified and 
confounded, unless the experience is a supernatural 
answer to the prayer; because the experience is 
conditioned upon the prayer in the faith of this su- 
pernatural agency, as without this faith the prayer 
would not be offered, and so there would be neither 
prayer nor expectancy, and no such result. If the 
result is merely a natural effect of the faith and 
prayer, it is the result of error and superstition, of 
mental imbecility and obliquity. Thus ignorance 
is not only the mother of devotion, but of all blessed 
and most exalted energies and susceptibilities and 
sympathies. If this is true, then philosophy and 
science are the enemies of all good, for they tend 
to make this good impossible. 

Besides, moral science always affirms that good- 
ness and happiness go with truth and right ; while 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFERIENCE, 201 

on this theory of naturalism they do not, but the 
contrary. 

Further, the breadth of this induction is abso- 
lutely overwhelming. Hardly any of the inductions 
of physical science, perhaps not one, have so wide 
a support in the multitude of instances. If I ques- 
tioned the accuracy of Kepler's three laws, I should 
be called presumptuous. Yet not more, perhaps 
than five or ten minds, if so many, have verified his 
calculations ; while millions on miUions of every age 
and clime, and from every strata of society, and 
every degree of abihty and culture have testified to 
the verification of this experience as the result of 
believing prayer. We find this verified in China, 
Japan, India, Africa, Polynesia and elsewhere just 
the same as in Great Britain, or America, and in 
all cases it exactly answers to the experience of the 
apostles and their contemporaries. This experience 
in every case, is the verification of the truth and 
power of the promise and beHef of supernatural 
agency in an answer to such faith and prayer. 

It has been objected to the primitive miracle 
argument, that the evidence being hmited to an un- 
scientific age and people, it is invahdated for our 
age ; and that besides, it does not fulfill one of the 
demands of modem science, which requires that 



202 CEBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

tlie experience shall be open to all, and be verifiable 
by all. This objection is here invalid and its con- 
dition is fulfilled in the experience of which we 
have spoken. "Wherever God has been sought in 
the prescribed method, He has been found; and 
this test is open to all and enjoined on all. Here 
God says, ^'try me and prove me, and see if I will 
not pour you out a blessing." 

There are various degrees of assurance in regard 
to this verification. Some persons are dim and du- 
bious in their repentance and faith and in their ex- 
perience of God's mercy and the power and comfort 
of his grace ; while others are very pronounced in 
both. But we fearlessly challenge the unbeUeving 
world to produce a single indubitable case of peni- 
tence and believiug prayer without any effect in the 
direction sought. We have never known or heard 
of such a case. The uniformity of the connection 
appears to be perfect. 

In concluding this chapter I will notice two objec- 
tions that may be raised to the argument of ex- 
perience. 

Some may say that they have sought in vain for 
this experience, and have faithfully complied with 
the alleged conditions. Their failure is not decisive. 
Notwithstanding their assurance, it is possible that 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 203 

they have not fulfilled the conditions ; and the value 
of their assertion is reduced to an infinitesimal frac- 
tion in view of the number and character of the wit- 
nesses to the verification of the truth of the promise ; 
and it is utterly nullified when we remember that 
countless numbers who once thought as they do 
have found a better experience subsequently and wit- 
nessed on the other side. 

Some have declared that they have had the ex- 
perience, and that it is illusory. But how do they 
know that the experience of others is illusory ? How 
much is theu' opinion worth against the opposite 
testimony ? Besides, myriads have said this, who 
have afterward testified to the genuine experience. 
These entirely invalidate those. These are positive, 
those negative. 

Now let the reader compare this law of uniformity 
with the known law of natural faith. We know that 
natural faith or faith in natural events or any faith 
other than this we are advocating does not always 
fulfill itself. Now if the Christian faith of which w^e 
speak were sometimes fulfilled but generally not ful- 
filled, it would be just like the law of natural faith, 
which is fulfilled only so far as it sets in operation 
certain known natural forces. But it differs from 
that law of natural faith in its uniformity, and with- 



204 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 

out our being able to show any natural connection 
between the faith and its consequence ; and then if 
we could show such a natural consequence of faith, 
we should show that nature operates in favor of error 
and superstition by fulfilling their expections and 
achie\dng for them a higher end than science and 
philosophy ever achieve for their most distinguished 
votaries. We think, therefore, true science cannot 
reject our conclusion, that we have a sufficiently 
wide and sound induction in support of Christian 
supernaturalism as attested in the experience of the 
Church. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCE, 205 



CHAPTEE VI. 

CHAKACTEKISTIC ELEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 

The experience of which we speak needs to be so 
far defined or described that it may be clearly tin- 
derstood, and also recognized as in the main an 
integral part of the faith of all Christian bodies. "We 
will therefore give the elements and conditions of 
this experience, but as briefly as is consistent with 
clearness and requisite emphasis. 

One of these elements or phases of the distinctive 
Christian consciousness is that of " peace with God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we 
have received the atonement." Acting on our in- 
telligence in concurrence with the Word the Holy 
Spirit has convinced the soul of sin so that the soul 
perceives that it is under the just and holy condem- 
nation of God. This consciousness of sin and ill 
desert is a condition of the first step toward conver- 
sion. The moment the soul gives itseK to God and 
exercises faith in the atonement of Christ, this feel- 



206 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

ing is removed, and the soul is like one relieved of a 
burden, just as Bunyan's pilgrim lost his burden at 
the cross and then went on his way rejoicing. Ac- 
cordingly, a joyous and exhilarated feeling is the 
usual accompaniment of this change ; and some- 
times this feeling is of a very pleasant and exalted 
nature, though its fervor after a while may subside. 
A decided change for the better in our moral and 
spiritual tastes and inclinations, and also in our 
moral and spiritual perceptions, is a characteristic 
of this change. Vanities and foUies which were 
once dearer than hfe have lost all their charms. 
Our pleasures and our ambitions are of a different 
and nobler order. We are conscious of a truly 
filial feehng toward God. We love Him, while be- 
fore we only reverenced or feared Him. He has 
become to us supremely and infinitely lovely. His 
word too has undergone a great illumination, and 
has taken on a strange charm, while many of its 
previous obscurities have utterly vanished. The 
epistles, especially, which before were dull and un- 
meaning, are clear as the hght and sweet as honey. 
Worship has become an appropriation of food and 
sweetness to the soul instead of a mere bodily exer- 
cise which profiteth little. The soul has suddenly 
acquired a strong affinity for Christian people of 



CHBISTIAJS CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 207 

spiritual tastes and conversation ; and so the Church 
as the organic kingdom of Christ and of righteous- 
ness has assumed a new aspect, and the convert 
wishes to be identified with it and to foster it. These 
holy tastes carry with them a holy power, so that 
known sins are abandoned, and sometimes even the 
temptation to them departs. 

Indeed, the prime feature of this new hfe, is a 
peculiar and spiritual power, which enables its sub- 
ject to live in conscious and evident victory over 
sin to which he had been a victim. Though neither 
innocent propensity to sin, nor sinful disposition 
may be wholly removed, they are put under- the 
dominion of the will, so far that they may not be 
able to find any voluntary expression, except 
through ignorance and misapprehension of their 
nature. In accordance with this, Mr. Wesley \\Tites : 
"An immediate and constant fruit of this faith, 
whereby we are born of God, a fruit which can in 
no wise be separated from it, no, not for an hour, is 
power over sin ; power over outward sin of every 
kind, over every evil word and work; over in- 
ward sin," so that vain and sinful thoughts and, 
feelings shall not be cherished, and be regnant in 
the breast, and if the faith is strong enough, they 
may be utterly eradicated at once. 



208 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

I shall make this suffice for a description of the 
essential elements of the change ; and I must add 
that these elements will exist in vastly different 
degrees of development in different persons ; and 
with growth and declension in religion, they wiU 
vary in this respect in the same persons ; and in 
some persons the religious element may be pure and 
unalloyed, the heart being entirely sanctified by the 
grace of God. 

It will appear from the short account of it which 
I have given, that this experieneee is not simply an 
emotion, or sensation. It is an experience which is 
commensurate with the conscious exercise of all 
our faculties. It is a power of holy action, of holy 
endurance, and of spiritual intuition; and it may 
exist and powerfully operate in these forms, without 
much or any distinctive feeling otherwise ; and in 
the practical and healthful operation of the spirit- 
ual life, it transmutes feeling into some form of 
effective force and action, instead of allowing the 
Hfe's force to escape as mere unused emotion, and 
unusable, like equally diffused heat. It is very 
possible and by no means uncommon to cultivate 
emotion for its own sake, as a luxury enjoyed and 
expended without any action or effort in the exer- 
tion of strength for some good end. This is spirit- 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 209 

ual dissipation, and injurious to the spiritual life. 
But some people often make such feelings the mea-s 
ure of rehgion, and imagine that if they can only 
excite them to a lofty pitch, they attain a very desir- 
able end. These feelings may wax and wane with- 
out any necessary change in the character. Yet 
they have a function to perform. They show us 
what a luxury and fehcity religion may become. 
They cheer us in toil and temptation. They may 
serve as a charm to the unconverted, who see the 
evidence of our joy. But above all, they are a 
force which by assimilation may be converted into 
working power ; and this should be the aim and re- 
sult at all times. 

The foregoing very brief synopsis of the pheno- 
mena of the spiritual or Christian life and experience, 
is written from the Methodist stand point. We 
will now give one from a Unitarian stand-point ; and 
this shall be given more fully, because, as this body 
of Christians is supposed to be less supematuralis- 
tic than Trinitarians, if they affirm the fact, and the 
methods and conditions of the experience on which 
we have based our argument, much more are these 
affirmed by the Trinitarians ; and we are thus seen to 
base our argument, not on a disputed point in 
theology, but on a fact and experience affirmed by 



210 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE, 

all parties in the Christian church. We will quote 
from an eloquent and excellent work, by E. H. 
Sears, on "Regeneration," and published by the 
Unitarian Association, at whose request it was also 
written. It is therefore as good authority as any- 
thing can b^ for the Unitarian denomination, 

" Regeneration implies three things : First, a 
clearing away of all hereditary corruption ; second- 
ly, a restoration of the natural powers and affections 
to their appropriate service, or changing their in- 
chnation from self, and make them incline toward 
God, and toward his angels. It is obvious, how- 
ever, that the divine work is accomplished in an 
order exactly the reverse of the one now stated." 
For the first ground of our regeneration is the spirit- 
ual nature, the immanence of the Divine Spirit in 
the soul. Its commencing dawn is the coming on 
of that light, until God shines within like another 
sun, diffusing warmth and radiance through our 
whole nature, and drawing us toward himself in the 
bonds of an all-attractive love. Then God becomes 
the prevailing force within us, and he bends our nat- 
ural powers toward himself and draws them all 
into his service. No one is regenerated unless he 
comes to something more than '* indulging a hope," 
or so long as the land of promise lies off in the dis- 



GimiSTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 211 

tance, and is not a present possession and fruition. 
The new man is not one who has got some mystic 
title-deed to the heavenly country hereafter. He is 
the man whose foot already is planted on its gi'ound, 
and who breathes its fragrance ; into whose soul 
heaven has passed and is passing now ; for the 
change of death is merely external ; it only removes 
our fleshly coverings. It does not remove us, it 
onl}^ takes off a veil. Having chosen the right, 
" heaven draws around his spirit and folds him in ; 
he breathes its airs ; he is filled with its harmonies ; 
he hears in his own moral nature its chimes hardly 
mellowed by distance, he holds fellowship with its 
shining ones." 

If any one should object that it is not given to man 
here on earth to pass into these high spiritual frames, 
or pitch his tent on this mountain of golden peace, 
we simply take issue on the fact. 

The new man is indicated by the new motives 
whence all his actions flow. Not until the spirit 
abiding within has melted the soul beneath the glow 
of the divine charms, not until the angel band of 
heavenly affections comes in, and the gang of selfish 
lusts goes out, do old things pass away and all things 
become new. Then begins the highest motive 
power, which is love. Now the soul hungers and 



212 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION ADN EXPERIENCE. 

thirsts after righteousness, as for daily bread and 
living waters. Now we obey the commandments be- 
cause we love them, and it is our mea,t and drink to 
do the will of the leather." 

" The regenerate state is again characterized by a 
new kind of worship, God is revealed, as never be- 
fore, the Hght and joy of our w^hole being. He sees 
nothing in us now that he does not love, for he sees 
his own work, and he calls it good. He glows within 
us as our Hfe and peace. Our worship is love com- 
muning with love ; the sons of God shouting for joy, 
their worship jubilant and spontaneous as the song 
of the summer bird on the airs of morning. 

"Last of all the regenerate state is characterized 
by a new morahty. Works are filled and vitahzed 
by that angeUc benevolence which is not complete 
until clothed and ultimated in action. 

''Works are to the soul what utterance is to genius, 
whose necessity is, I must speak, or else I die ; and 
whose glorious conceptions lie on the soul like a 
burden, and flood it with a beauty which it cannot 
bear, until these conceptions are born into the ac- 
tual worth, and embodied in the canvas, the marble 
or the epic song. So is it with the man created 
anew in Christ and inspired with heavenly senti- 
ments. 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEEIENCE. 213 

" Ideas of goodness, beneficence, justice, truth, al- 
ways rolling in upon the soul when warmed with the 
supremely good and fair, always seeking on earth 
their embodiment and resting place, leaves us no 
peace unless we give them shape in outward things, 
and carve the substance of this world into their own 
bright and heavenly image." So much for the char- 
acteristics of regeneration. 

Mr. Sears explains in the next chapter that this 
great change is conditioned on our choice of God 
and the right as our supreme portion and pursuit. 
It is not necessary to quote in proof of this. It is 
however to be considered that choice is impossible 
without faith or trust in respect to the moral nature 
and issue of such choice, and so faith is as neces- 
sary a condition as the choice. Mr. Sears does not 
over-look this, and therefore in a subsequent chap- 
ter he says : " The faith in Christ that saves is not 
so much the residt of intellection as a perception of 
his moral grandeur and Divinity, adequate to our 
necessities and adopted to fill the chasm in our na- 
tures. Then we fly to him with the swift alacrity of 
a child that seeks a lost parent, and our natures are 
tender and pliable beneath his plastic hand. Faith 
in Christ is not a mere behef in the historical ad- 
vent, but in the hving Christ that ever comes from 



214 CHBISTIAN CONCEFTION AND hXPEEIENCE. 

the heavens as the Comforter and Eedeemer of 
souls. 

" Such was the faith for which Paul reasoned so 
earnestly ; not a faith which should entitle the be- 
liever to a share in some reserved fund of foreign 
merit, but bring him into hving relations to a Divine 
Mediator, so that his heart should be swept all the 
while with renewing gales and have a righteousness 
imparted to him every hour* Paul himself had a 
signal experience of this influence, melting the ada- 
mant of Jewish bigotry, and making the Pharisee 
humble as a child. Hence his great topic is faith in 
Christ as the essential (condition) of inward life and 
power ; the essential (condition) of that regenera- 
ting influence which should draw man to God, and 
so restore human nature and the Divine nature to 
their primal harmonies." 

Hence faith or trust, as implying choice, may be 
taken by us as it was by Paul, to represent the sum 
of the conditions on which the experience under con- 
sideration depends. 

As our experience of the power of faith in Christ 
is not confined to the inner consciousness of each 
individual ; and as it necessarily molds the whole life 
and reveals its operations in all the forms of human 
activity, v/hether in individual or associated action, it 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 215 

therefore also makes its mark in history. Here it is 
less defined than in individual experience and action, 
but not less certain. No sooner had the lapse of 
time after the death of Christ and the growth of the 
Christian church, afforded an opportunity for ob- 
serving the forces which were operating than the in- 
fluence of Christianity became manifest in various 
beneficent results, a thousand years and more before 
modern science was bom. 

To Christianity belongs the glory of leavening 
European society with a superior moral and spiritual 
element and destrojong some of its worst customs. 

It is perfectly obvious to every student of history 
that at the beginning of the Christian era, the more 
cultured and civilized European society was utterly 
corrupt, and that this corruption w^as attended and 
fostered by the prevalence of rehgious skepticism, 
and the most base and infamous moral principles . 
and that on the other hand, compared with all this, 
Christianity was sun-bright purity and moral power. 
This pure religion attacked this corrupt society, 
shamed it into a degree of reform, and drove its bad 
principles into obscurity, and filled their place with a 
purer influence, and in so doing it vastly modified 
the moral condition of society. This is confessed even 
by Gibbon, who ascribes in part the success of Chris- 



216 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

tianity to its superior doctrines, and severer morals. 
For instance, sodomy was among the Greeks and 
Eomans esteemed a virtue, and in that light descan- 
ted on by Socrates and Plato. The heathen tem- 
ples then, as they are now, were always the abodes 
of scores or hundreds of women who were conse- 
crated prostitutes, whose trade supplied the revenues 
of the temple. 

We have a striking monument of the moral and 
religious energy inherent in the Christian supernat- 
urahstic faith in the operations of modern Missions. 

Think of the magnitude and multidude of these 
estabhshments, of the vast and steady outlay of cap- 
ital which they involve, of the sublime object at 
which they aim, of the many truly sublime lives 
which they have developed, besides the hundreds of 
others who though less exalted have exhibited a 
principle of Christian love, wide as the world and 
strong enough to snap asunder the adamant 
chains that bind them to their homes and native 
lands ; then think of the results which are already 
reached, civil, social, scientific, moral and religious, 
so great, so multifarious as to baffle description, ex- 
cept in historic detail : and finally consider that all 
this is only incipient, that these missions are yearly 
growing stronger and more numerous, that converted 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 217 

native workers are multiplying in an increasing 
ratio, that the heathen communities in the midst of 
which these missions are stationed, are being grad- 
ually and surely leavened with Christian ideas, and 
accustomed to Christian practices, that as a conse- 
quence there is a wide and powerful fermentation 
among all classes, while the relative proofs and value 
of Christian doctrines are becoming the subjects of 
wide-spread discussion, and even " a nation is bom 
at once " into the Christian faith as in the case of 
Madagascar. Such operations as these, and similar 
efforts for the debased and spiritually destitute 
home populations, are confined to those who beheve 
in the supernaturahsm of Christianity. 

Where in all the world outside of this faith do we 
find an exhibition of moral and spiritual life and 
power at all approximating this in purity, breadth, 
effectiveness and steady endurance, and organized 
fixedness ? The answer is — nowhere. 

Of course, it is within the power of the unsympa- 
thetic to depreciate all this, and the lives of the great 
men and good men who have inaugurated and sus- 
tained these movements. But all such depreciation 
reflects unfavorably upon those who indulge it. It 
is too clearly similar in its origin to the low and un- 
favorable opinion that selfish, vicious and grov ling 



218 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCK 

dispositions always entertain respecting what is mor- 
ally above them. It it but the brand of self-condem- 
nation which justice affixes upon them. Bat wisdom 
is justified of her children. 

The operation of supernaturalistic Christianity, 
which in our opinion is the only Christianity, is also 
seen in unparelled beauty and benefiicence in forms 
of individual life and action. Take the case of Mr. 
Moffatt. He goes to a distant land, deprives him- 
self of all the charms of civilized associations for a 
life among savages, not to become a savage like 
them, but preserving all the feelings and tastes of 
cultured society, and making sleepless endeavors to 
elevate the conceptions, and purify the morals of 
those savages, and to introduce among them the arts 
and tastes of civilized life. This is only a case of 
thousands ; and it is exclusively a Christian pheno- 
menon and development. It has been exemplified 
in its main features of self-denial for the good of 
others, for their moral and religious and social in- 
struction and elevation by hundreds in their own 
country in every century and in every land where 
Christianity has come. It is to lives like these, the 
direct offspring of faith in Christian supernaturalism, 
that we are surely justified in ascribing the chief su- 
periority of Europe or America to Cathay, and in 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 219 

affirming that the chief reason why the difference is 
not greater is that in Christendom itself there are so 
few who fully and heartily embrace Christian princi- 
ples. 

That dark and wicked things have been done in 
the name of Christianity is nothing against it, as all 
acknowledge that those things are perversions of 
Christianity, either through ignorance or dehberate 
hypocrisy ; and so they are done against Christianity 
and in spite of it, instead of flowing from it. They 
come of that native human wickedness which Chris- 
tianity seeks to destroy. 

The elevating influence of supematuralistic 
Christianity would become further manifest by com- 
paring its greatest characters, including its founder, 
with the greatest characters who have not known or 
recognized its claims and principles. 

As a living example at home of the working of 
this supematuraUstic ideal and faith and experience, 
we may point to George Muller, of Bristol, England. 
His early life gave no signs of moral and spiritual 
genius. In moral worth he seemed not to be above 
the average of well-born persons. He charges him- 
sel with meanness and falsehood and with low views 
and aims and pursuits. But giving himself in peni- 
tence and faith to Christ, he became the subject of 



220 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCK 

new powers and experiences, and from that time he 
has developed a new life, a life of the very noblest 
order. In moral and spuitual beauty and power this 
life has no compeer or rival among non-theistic 
men or natural Theists. This life is the direct pro- 
duct of Christian and supernaturaKstic Theism as he 
has conceived and beheved it. "What then shall we 
say of its cause ? Can the fruit of Theism and su- 
pematurahsm be better and the tree itself worse 
than atheism or naturalism ? Can it be that the 
false faith is the best in its working and result ? No ; 
for this contradicts itseK, since all thought and ar- 
gument proceed on the contrary assumption. 

I have mentioned Mr. Muller as only one of thou- 
sands, of equal or greater moral worth and useful- 
ness, though there are few whose life and its fruits 
are so striking and definitely appreciable. 



CHBIS2IAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCK 221 



CHAPTER VII. 



HINDRANCES. 



We have seen in a previous chapter that in gene- 
ral it is only the lack of spuitual insight which ob- 
scures the moral glories of Christianity. But there are 
many forms and causes of this blindness and conse- 
quent obscuration of the Truth. We propose to cite 
some of these, and show more specifically why many 
wise men fail to discern and follow the Supreme Idea 
and repose their faith in Christ. 

To analyze preversity is of no intrinsic advan- 
tage, and such employment is unattractive to any 
well-poised mind. But if by this means we can 
fasten more firmly the just charge of guilt, or guard 
a soul from danger, or lead a sinner to repentance, 
our ungracious and distasteful task returns us a com- 
pensation. 

There are reasons or causes of skepticism which 
are personal and pecuhar, and these cannot be 
given. There are others which are of a general na- 



222 CEBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

ture and pertinent to our theme, and so demand our 
attention. 

Of these, one of the most prominent and conspic- 
uous, or at least one of the most influential, is Phari- 
seeism. The reader may be startled a little at this, 
as it seems quite novel in such a connection. If 
any of these savans should see this chapter, and if 
at the same time they cared anything for its author, 
It would stir them unpleasently to find themselves 
classed with those narrow and jealous old Jews 
vvhom we all despise and detest so heartily, and 
against whom even these savans would be arrayed 
In defense of Jesus — at least in modern times. In 
those times they would, no doubt, have been called 
Sadducees, had they been Jews. But both Saddu- 
cees and Pharisees had one quahty in common, a 
quality which was most conspicuous in the latter, 
and which is always suggested by the term Pharisee. 
That quality is moral conceit. It was more obstru- 
sive and more offensively proclaimed and embla- 
zoned by the Pharisee than it is by the savan ; but I 
suspect that in the latter it is more thoroughly 
woven into the texture of his self-estimates, and more 
completely free from conflict or annoyance from the 
profounder depths of the spirit or from any outer 
source. The modern is more homogeneous than 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 223 

was the ancient Pharisee. He has no need Kke his 
ancient prototype, to offer prayers, or pay tithes, or 
give alms in order to keep up his good opinion of 
himself. His pliilosophy itself, like Eosseau's book 
of confessions, is sufficient proof of his moral 
worth. 

This is in vital antagonism to one of the initial 
elements of the Christian Ideal, which demands re- 
pentance and self-renunciation. All who come to 
Christ must come as sinners, who renounce all claim 
on the ground of their own merit and look to Christ 
as the Lord our Righteousness. This is repulsive 
to these philosophical Pharisees. They do not 
wish to be *' plucked" in this style. Why not leave 
to them their moral plumes, and allow them appro- 
priately "to make a spread?" 

Mr. H. is an indisputable proof of the truth of 
what I affirm. Tie declares that this was exactly the 
state of his own mind. While he thought it a bene- 
fit to most people to get converted, as they call it, 
and to become Christians and join the church, he 
wished to consider himself as above all need of the 
kind, as better without conversion than they with it. 
He confesses that to nothing in Christianity was he 
so vitally opposed as to the doctrine that he must be 
saTed through the merits of another, and by the 



224 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTIOK AND EXPERIENCE. 

mercy and grace of God ; that as a condition of this 
he must confess inherent vileness, and that without 
divine mercy and grace he is helpless, lost, undone 
forever ; and that he must virtually proclaim all this 
to the pubHc, as Christ admits no disciples who are 
ashamed of him or his gospel, and will not confess 
him before men. This confession he has made be- 
fore many vdtnesses, together with his former phari- 
seeism and its happy termination by the grace of 
God. 

Another cause of their wrong and fatal course is 
their intellectual pride. The very first class of 
minds have never shown any sign of this, not in this 
direction. But to men who do not attain that high 
rank, who can elaborate a theory, and make an im- 
posing display of argumentation, added to a fertile 
invention, and fluent expression, the indulgence of a 
well-regulated conceit of superior intellect is a luxury 
which they cannot forego on any consideration. It 
is an enjoyment beyond all price. Have they not 
had the genius to discover what antiquates the Gos- 
pels, or at least the second genius to understand 
those who made this discovery ; and shall they take 
the laurals from their own brows and trample on 
them by following a track which w^ould ultimately 
lead them to the feet of Jesus ? That is more than 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 225 

can be expected. What were the use of their intel- 
lectual progress and achievements, if they are to 
stultify them like this ? 

Besides, is not their intellect their distinctive glory? 
and is not this the highest of all possible distinc- 
tions? Why then should they surrender it and its 
products by submitting to mechanical processes 
which will dim the hght of thought and replace the 
triumphs of genius with the vagaries and symbols of 
superstition? They therefore fix their eje steadily 
on their theory, and refuse to see any excellence but 
that. The Christian Ideal is looked at with half- 
closed eyes, so that its glories look dimmer than the 
twilight. And suppose these were never so bright, 
this is only an ideal, a beautiful fiction, while their 
theory is science, philosophy, truth. It does not 
occur to them, nor in their state of mind can it 
occur to them, that it is no abrogation of their intel- 
ligence to admire a subhme ideal even if its objec- 
tive reahty may be doubtful ; and that it is far nobler 
and far more worthy of high intelligence to strive 
after the moral reahzation of this ideal than to be 
content with an inferior reality. To them the joy 
of an inferior pride is better than the joy of a supe- 
rior aspiration and hope and effort with the superior 
results which inevitably follow such a course. Thus 



226 CHRIS J IAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

their intellectualy pride at once obscures and debas- 
es both their intelhgence and their moral and spirit- 
ual character. 

My friend H. is a confessed example of this also. 
He made no pretensions to great originality in phi- 
losophy, but he thought he could see into the 
foundations and causes of things far more profound- 
ly and broadly than Christians do. He could ex- 
plain all their marvels by natural causes. He could 
see and show the weaknesses of our defenses, weak- 
nesses of which our incapacity is unobservant. He 
could in many striking particulars show the crude- 
ness and incoherency of our views. Of course, this 
was quite an intellectual distinction. It were impos- 
sible to feel all that without a degree of elation, and 
without a temptation to make out his own elevation 
as clear and as great as possible. He will naturally 
be indisposed to see the sublime in Christianity. 
That would relatively dimish the lustre of his anti- 
Christian attainments and his pleasure in their con- 
templation. His own proud intellectual self and the 
prowess of his favorite infidel authors have become 
his ideal ; and while this can be complacently main- 
tained the Christian Ideal will shine in vain for him. 
In these frigid heights of a vain pride he dwelt for 
many years — till he saw his own idols gashed and 



CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 227 

marred, and saw that some Christians know as 
much as he and his masters. He sees it all now and 
has no reserve in making the confession. 
His song is now 

My all to Christ I've given, 
My talents, time and voice, 

Myself, my reputation, 
Jesus only is my choice, 

It should be added, however, that he is as sharp 
as ever to detect a flaw in a Christian's argument, 
discriminating the poor argument from Christianity 
itself. 

Another cause of the inefficacy of the Supreme 
Idea Tvith many men of science is their subjection 
to the domination of sensible phenomena. The 
senses give the law to their imagination, and their 
imagination controls or rather constitutes their in- 
tellect and conscience. To them the highest 
processes and the highest ends are found in 
" the uses of the scientific imagination," which 
deals only in sensible phenomena and their rela- 
tion to each other. Hence an idea which trans- 
cends all these appears to them dubious and dim, 
and it is devoid of power to charm and animate 
them. They will pronounce it mystical and trans- 



228 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 

cendental, or visionary and illusive, or a " pseudo- 
idea " which imposes on its subject, who erroneously 
thinks it a real and genuine conception. Our argu- 
ment, of course, is nugatory to those who cannot 
discern the Supreme Idea and who consider our rep- 
resentation of it as an illusion. We wait till they 
receive their sight. 

Closely allied with this, and one of its constituent 
elements, is the domination in their minds of the 
law of uniforminity or natural causation. This 
seetQS to preclude^ all supernatural interposition by 
rendering it apparently needless, and showing no 
place for it. Thus nature becomes the eternal all. 

This is fostered by the spiritual apathy and dis- 
gust natural to our race, that state of mind which is 
described in the Scriptures as the carnal mind, which 
is averse to God. The remedy for this is within 
their reach, and they are responsible for its continu- 
ance and ruling operation. We may argue with them 
and pray for them ; but only their own free act in 
seeking and submitting to the truth and grace of 
Christ can give them freedom from the slavery of 
their inferior conception and make them know the 
glory and power of the Supreme Idea and the reality 
of the experience which we have expounded. 

The wrong bias and wilful turning away from the 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 229 

truth was strikingly exemplified in the grandfather 
of the present Dr. Darwin, as seen in the following 
extract from the Biocjraphia Literaria, of Coleridge : 
" Dr. Darwin possesses, perhaps, a greater range of 
knowledge than any other man in Europe, and is 
the most inventive of philosophical men. He thinl^s 
in a new train on all subjects but rehgion. He ban- 
tered me on the subject of rehgion. I heard all his 
arguments, and told him it was infinitely consohng 
to me, to find the arguments of so great a man, ad- 
duced against the existence of God and the eviden- 
ces of revealed rehgion, were such as had startled 
me at the age of fifteen, but had become the objects 
of my smile at twenty. No new objection, not even 
an ingenious one. He boasted that he had never 
read one book in favor of such stuff, but that he had 
read all the works of infidels." — p. 628. 



230 CHRISTIAN CONCEFTION AND EXPEBIENCR 



CHAPTEE YHl. 

HINDEANCES OVEECOME. 

Science and philosophy are our natural Law and 
Gospel, and when not perverted must contribute to 
the highest efficiency of the Gospel of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, not merely by discovering new eviden- 
ces of its divine authority, and exhibiting fresh il- 
lustrations of the perfection of the divine attributes, 
but also by correcting and regulating our specific 
judgments in the application of general principles. 

Every age generates new difficulties on the sub- 
ject of religion, and those who see these difficulties 
clearly, and who are also lacking in spiritual experi- 
ence and perception, will be overcome by them, and 
Christianity will be rejected. This class must be 
met and answered purely on the foundation of 
science, and they must be shown that their own 
toundation does not support them. Till the founda- 
tions of their positive disbehef are destroyed or ren- 
dered doubtful at least, it is in vain to urge them to 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 231 

a practical and yital trust in Christ for salvation. 
And if the Gospel is of God it has the same Author 
with nature and so cannot clash with nature ; and 
hence those who reject the Gospel on the score of 
nature's teachings do it only because of their misap- 
prehension of nature, and this misapprehension can 
be exposed by true science and philosophy, for these 
accord with facts ; and all facts must accord with 
the Gospel of God, and so go against the rejecters 
of the Gospel. Conversely it holds true, that if 
science does not support, but opposes Christianity, 
then, Christianity is not true ; so that we are always 
bound to show the harmony of science with revela- 
tion, or at least that they do not conflict. Every 
age therefore demands a class of philosophical di- 
vines who are well versed alike in the doctrines of 
the Gospel and in the scientific thought of the age, 
men who are able to show to tempted and doubting 
scientists that revelation has no legitimate foe in 
anything that science reveals, and that the claims 
of the Gospel on their credence are philosophical 
and just. Science can thus defend the Gospel in de- 
fending and unfolding itseK. 

But science is competent to do more. It can cor- 
rect and instruct all, even Christians. Almost any 
man, however pious and however lofty in his moral 



282 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBlENtE. 

conceptions, would have thought it wrong two or 
three hundred years ago to say, that the sun is sta- 
tionary and that the earth revolves around it, or to 
say, that the earth and seas were the scenes of teem- 
ing populations of animals myriads of years before 
Adam lived. It is on this side of the history of hu- 
man progress that they are justified who say that this 
progress has not been moral but intellectual, that the 
change and progress in our notions of what is right 
or wrong has been the effect of intellectual progress. 
It is true, that the fundamental principles of morals 
remain the same as they were thousands of years ago 
and must remain the same forever, while our judg- 
ments of the right or wrong of this or that have rad- 
ically changed in a countless host of particular cases, 
simply because of the advancement of scientific 
knowledge. Hence a perfect scientific culture is 
necessary to the developement of a perfect moral cen- 
sor. In this way science is a universal social bless- 
ing ^^d. a rectifier of crude moral judgments, judg- 
ments which are based on misapprehension, and so 
both erroneous and injurious, and sometimes both 
unjust and cruel in their effects. 

But when science has vindicated revelation against 
intellectual skepticism, and when it has rectified all 
our erroneous special judgments, it has not done 



CllBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE. 233 

eyerTthing for us that our moral and spiritual nature 
requires for its proper developement and dignity. 

After all this we may remain in a very low spirit- 
ual state, with small spiritual intuition or aspira- 
tion. We may live mostly or wholly in the low 
plane of a merely earthly life. We may believe only 
because we have seen or had evidences derived from 
without, so that while we are nominally Christians 
we are practically infidels. This is the condition of 
a large proportion of the so-called Christian world. 
They think the Bible must be true for various rea- 
sons which they can appreciate. But as to the spe- 
cial and pecuhar and very lofty doctrines which it is 
alleged to teach, of the Deity of Christ, of a divine 
atonement, of the new birth or the renewal of the 
character by the Holy Spirit, in answer to the 
prayer of the belie\ang penitent, and of plighted di- 
vine grace to live a holy Ufe, walking with God in 
conscious and happy communion with Him, and 
that this is the immediate duty and constant prive- 
lege of all — there they stand in doubt and mental 
vacillation. They have httle or no inner light or 
vision or faculty divine, by which they can directly 
discern that these and other such doctrines are of 
God and supremely glorious; and whether in the 
church or out, they are practically dead for rehgious 



234 CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPEBIENCE. 

good, being without spiritual enthusiasm and earn- 
estness and joy. All these want a power which the 
science or philosophy of the universe can never give. 
They want to be impregnated by the moral and 
spiritual energy of the Infinite, the Sun of Eight- 
eousness. The Spirit of God must make them the 
children of God, when they will be children of light 
and CHILDREN OF THE DAY, and not of the night, as 
they are now. This is to be made a conscious 
Christian, who knows the Truth and knows that he 
knows ; and it is such a Christian that the psalm- 
ists, the prophets and the epistles describe as an ac- 
knowledged servant and child of God. 

Tliese may not be versed in the '^ evidences," so- 
called, and science may have disclosed to them few of 
its treasures, and many of them have read but little, 
except their own heart and the Bible, with a few 
pages and a few columns here and there as small op- 
portunity, and perhaps small taste have prompted or 
allowed. Yet they hnow whom (key have believed,, and 
that Ijc is able to keep that which they have com- 
mitted to him until that day. They pin not their faith 
to any other man's sleeve, nor in any wise depend on 
the learning of others as a ground of their faith in 
the Bible as the book of God and in Christ as the 
Saviour of penitent sinners. As one of this class 



CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 235 

recently said, which is what the class has always 
said, they are not moved by Tyndall's infideUty, nor 
would they be moved if all the world should disbe- 
lieve. They know by experience and the inner vis- 
ion the truth they profess, and they need not that 
any man should teach them on this point. They do 
not believe without evidence, and their evidence is 
quite as scientific and philosophical as any that is 
generally so accounted, and of a higher order. In- 
deed, its philosophy is only doubted or denied be- 
cause, it outranks the capacity of the mere scien- 
tists and philosophers. Sir Wm. Hamilton said 
that the profound and original Arthur Collier was a 
high churchman, on grounds which high churchmen 
could not understand. It is thus that these Christ- 
ians (and in fact all Christians) are Christians, on 
grounds, which transcending all natural power with- 
out the Spirit, surpasses the comprehension of anti- 
christian men of science. 

It is a larger measure of sight or knowledge 
which the Church itself needs above all things. 
Very valuable are any contributions to the "evi- 
dences " as a check to skepticism on that subject ; 
and every new fact that rectifies erroneous judgments 
is a very desirable acquisition ; but these do not bring 
the dead to life nor give sight totliebhnd. They do 



236 cimrsTiAN conception and experience, 

not necessarily bring the soul into affiliation with 
God, and disclose the moral splendors of the upper 
world, the spiritual realm, where the advanced spirit- 
ual nature lives and moves, and has its being. For 
this the grace of God is necessary, giving a new life. 
We want to be endued with power from on high ; 
and, we repeat, the Church needs it in a larger 
measure. There are so many among us who know 
so little of this, that they serve as a cloud- wrapper 
around the more spiritual, and thus hide from the 
outside world, the better and holier light which the 
Church contains. The glory of the Lord needs to 
light upon us all, and burn into us that we may rise 
and shine. 

It is the exercise and exhibition of this higher and 
hoUer light and power, which are necessary to con- 
vince and inspire, and animate the indifferent and 
languid multitude, composed of those who are not 
positive disbelievers in religion and Christianity, but 
who are earth-worms, though of various forms and 
habits and surbordinate appetites and tastes, who 
have no wings to rise into the upper and spiritual 
air, nor scarce a faculty to concieve any higher style 
of life and happiness than that they follow and en- 
joy. So far as possible they must be made to see it 
in living examples in the Church. 



CHEISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE, 237 

Yet these examples can be discovered and fully 
understood only by the aid of a divine revealer. 
An earnest waiting Church must effectively invoke 
the enhghtening power of the Holy Spirit ; as He 
only reveals the Father and the Son, and all the 
gi'and economy of spiritual truth and forces. He 
gives life and significance to the dark dead letter, 
turns history into providence, and nature into the 
universal hand-writing of a just and gracious, and 
merciful God. He is the ever-flaming lamp of the 
temple, and the celestial fire v/hich burns on the 
alter, in which only the offered sacrifice is accepta- 
ble. 

In the mean while no one is exempt from respon- 
sibility. No one is abandoned of God. To all He 
gives some degree of light and power, which, if 
properly used, will develope more. If they prefer 
to follow stronger, though inferior, inclinations, and 
to gaze only or chiefly on the more garish and vul- 
gar lights, and to exalt them into supreme guides, 
they must bear the moral consequences. Their 
light must go out in total darkness, and the black- 
ness of darkness forever must be their portion. On 
the other hand, if they follow faithfully their best 
light, however faint it be, and treat it according to 
its dignity, not according to its quantity and its 



238 CHBISTIAN CONCEPTION AND EXFEBIENCE, 

glare, it will surely become clearer and stronger till 
it floods the horizon with its glory. Unto him that 
hath shall be given, and from him that hath not 
shall be taken away even that he hath. Unto the 
hght given ye do well to take heed, as imto a Hght 
that shineth in a dark place nntil the day dawn, and 
the day star arise in your hearts. 



THE END. 



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